THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



•The 




THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 



THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 



TORONTO 




THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



BY 

JOSIAH ROYCE 

#§ 

PEOFESSOR OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 
IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1919 

All rights reserved 



JBTi 



533 



Copyright, 1908, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1908. 



3fc 



J. S. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



PREFACE 



In 1906 and 1907 I gave, as a part of my 
regular work at the Summer School of Har- 
vard University, an " Introduction to Ethics, 
with Special Reference to the Interests of 
Teachers/' A few lectures, summing up the 
main principles that lay at the basis of this 
ethical course as it had been given in the 
summer of 1906, were delivered in January 
and February, 1907, before a general academic 
audience, during a brief visit of mine at the 
University of Illinois. In several other places, 
both in the West and in the East, I have also 
presented portions of my views upon ethics; 
and in the summer of 1907 four general 
lectures on the topic were repeated before 
the Summer School of Theology at Harvard. 
In November and December of 1907 the 
lectures that constitute the present book were 
delivered for the first time before the Lowell 
Institute in Boston. 



vi 



PREFACE 



In preparing this new statement of my case 
for the Lowell Institute course, I thus had 
the opportunity to use the experience and 
the criticisms that had resulted from several 
previous efforts of mine to set forth my views 
about the topics treated in this "Philosophy 
of Loyalty/ 5 The Lowell Institute lectures 
were, in fact, substantially a fresh presenta- 
tion of the material, — only Lecture V, on 
"American Problems," retaining any large 
portion of the text of any of my former lec- 
tures. But, as the reader may see from the 
foregoing statement, the general doctrine con- 
tained in " The Philosophy of Loyalty " here 
worked out has been discussed, in various 
forms, and with a good many friends, pupils, 
and critics. I hope, therefore, that this book 
bears marks of the aid that I have gained 
from such contact with many sorts of minds, 
in widely different places. 

During the present academic year, 1907- 
1908, the doctrine here presented has also 
been put into the form of a regular college 
course, which I have been permitted, as 



PREFACE 



vii 



visiting lecturer, to give to undergraduate 
students at Yale University in weekly class- 
meetings. 

The present book, although in this way 
related to present and past academic tasks, 
is, nevertheless, not a text-book, and does not 
mean to be an elaborately technical philo- 
sophical research. It is simply an appeal to 
any reader who may be fond of ideals, and 
who may also be willing to review his own 
ideals in a somewhat new light and in a 
philosophical spirit. Loyalty is indeed an 
old word, and to my mind a precious one; 
and the general idea of loyalty is still far 
older than the word, and is immeasurably 
more precious. But this idea has nearly 
always been confused in men's minds by its 
chance social and traditional associations. 
Everybody has heard of loyalty; most prize 
it; but few perceive it to be what, in its in- 
most spirit, it really is, — the heart of all the 
virtues, the central duty amongst all duties. 
In order to be able to see that this is the true 
meaning of the idea of loyalty, one has to free 



PREFACE 



this idea from its unessential if somewhat 
settled associations with this or that special 
social habit or circumstance. And in order 
to accomplish this latter end, one has indeed 
to give to the term a more exact meaning than 
popular usage defines. 

It is this freeing of the idea of loyalty from 
its chance and misleading associations; it is 
this vindication of the spirit of loyalty as the 
central spirit of the moral and reasonable life 
of man, — it is this that I believe to be some- 
what new about my " Philosophy of Loyalty." 
The conception of " Loyalty to Loyalty/ 5 as 
set forth in my third lecture, constitutes the 
most significant part of this ethical task. For 
the rest, if my philosophy is, as a theory, more 
or less new, I am still only trying to make 
articulate what I believe to be the true spirit 
and meaning of all the loyal, whoever they 
may be, and however they define their fidelity. 

The result of conceiving duty in terms of 
the conception of loyalty which is here ex- 
pounded is, indeed, if I am right, somewhat 
deep-going and transforming, not only for 



PREFACE 



ethics, but for most men's views of truth and 
reality, and of religion. My own general 
philosophical opinions have been set forth in 
various works some time since (most elabo- 
rately in the volumes entitled " The World 
and the Individual"). I have no change to 
report in my fundamental metaphysical theses. 
But I have not published any formulation of 
my ethical opinions since the brief review 
of ethical problems in the first part of my 
" Religious Aspect of Philosophy " (published 
in 1885). One learns a good deal about 
ethics as one matures. And I believe that 
this present statement of mine ought to help 
at least some readers to see that such philo- 
sophical idealism as I have long maintained 
is not a doctrine remote from life, but is in 
close touch with the most practical issues; 
and that religion, as well as daily life, has 
much to gain from the right union of ethics 
with a philosophical theory of the real world. 

At the moment there is much speech, in 
current philosophical literature, regarding the 
i 6 nature of truth " and regarding " prag- 



PREFACE 



matism." An ethical treatise very naturally 
takes advantage of this situation to discuss 
the relation between the "practical" and — 
the Eternal. I have done so in my closing 
lectures. In order to do so, I have had to 
engage in a certain polemic regarding the 
problem of truth, — a polemic directed against 
certain opinions recently set forth by one of 
the dearest of my friends, and by one of the 
most loyal of men; my teacher for a while in 
my youth; my honored colleague for many 
years, — Professor William James. Such a 
polemic would be indeed much out of place 
in a book upon Loyalty, were it not that my 
friend and myself fully agree that, to both of 
us, truth indeed " is the greater friend." Had 
I not very early in my work as a student 
known Professor James, I doubt whether any 
poor book of mine would ever have been 
written, — least of all the present one. What 
I personally owe him, then, I most heartily 
and affectionately acknowledge. But if he 
and I do not see truth in the same light at 
present, we still do well, I think, as friends, 



PREFACE 



each to speak his mind as we walk by the 
way, and then to wait until some other light 
shines for our eyes. I suppose that so to 
do is loyalty. 

Meanwhile, I am writing, in this book, not 
merely and not mainly for philosophers, but 
for all those who love, as I said, ideals, and 
also for those who love, as I may now add, 
their country, — a country so ripe at present 
for idealism, and so confused, nevertheless, 
by the vastness and the complication of its 
social and political problems. To simplify 
men's moral issues, to clear their vision for 
the sight of the eternal, to win hearts for 
loyalty, — this would be, in this land, a 
peculiarly precious mission, if indeed I could 
hope that this book could aid, however little, 
towards such an end. 

Amongst the numerous friends to whom 
(whether or no they agree with all my views) 
I am especially indebted for direct and in- 
direct aid in preparing this book, and for 
criticisms and other suggestions, I must men- 
tion: first, my wife, who has constantly 



xii 



PREFACE 



helped me with her counsel, and in the 
revision of my text; then, my sister, Miss 
Ruth Royce, of San Jose, California, with 
whom I discussed the plan of the work in 
the summer of 1907 ; then, Doctor and Mrs. 
R. C. Cabot of Boston; Doctor J. J. Putnam 
of Boston; and, finally, my honored col- 
league, Professor George H. Palmer. 

Harvard University, 

Cambridge, Massachusetts, 
March 1, 1908. 



CONTENTS 

LEOTUEE PAGS 

I. Nature and Need of Loyalty . . 1 

II. Individualism 49 

III. Loyalty to Loyalty 99 

IV. Conscience ...... 147 

V. Some American Problems in their Rela- 
tion to Loyalty . 197 

VI. Training for Loyalty .... 249 

VII. Loyalty, Truth, and Reality . . . £99 

VIII. Loyalty and Religion .... 349 



NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY 



LECTURE I 



THE NATURE AND THE NEED OF LOYALTY 

ONE of the most familiar traits of our time 
is the tendency to revise tradition, to 
reconsider the foundations of old beliefs, and 
sometimes mercilessly to destroy what once 
seemed indispensable. This disposition, as 
we all know, is especially prominent in the 
realms of social theory and of religious be- 
lief. But even the exact sciences do not 
escape from the influence of those who are 
fond of the reexamination of dogmas. And 
the modern tendency in question has, of late 
years, been very notable in the field of Ethics. 
Conventional morality has been required, 
in company with religion, and also in com- 
pany with exact science, to endure the fire 
of criticism. And although, in all ages, the 
moral law has indeed been exposed to the 
assaults of the wayward, the peculiar moral 
situation of our time is this, that it is no 
longer either the flippant or the vicious who 

3 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

are the most pronounced or the most dan- 
gerous opponents of our moral traditions. 
Devoted reformers, earnest public servants, 
ardent prophets of a coming spiritual order, 
— all these types of lovers of humanity are 
represented amongst those who to-day de- 
mand great and deep changes in the moral 
standards by which our lives are to be gov- 
erned. We have become accustomed, during 
the past few generations, — during the period 
of Socialism and of Individualism, of Karl 
Marx, of Henry George, of Ibsen, of Nietz- 
sche, of Tolstoi, — to hear unquestionably 
sincere lovers of humanity sometimes declar- 
ing our traditions regarding the rights of 
property to be immoral, and sometimes as- 
sailing, in the name of virtue, our present 
family ties as essentially unworthy of the 
highest ideals. Individualism itself, in many 
rebellious forms, we often find asserting that 
it speaks in the name of the true morality 
of the future. And the movement begun 
in Germany by Nietzsche — the tendency 
towards what that philosophical rhapsodist 

4 



NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY 



called the "transmutation of all moral val- 
ues 99 — has in recent years made popular 
the thesis that all the conventional morality 
of the past, whatever may have been its in- 
evitableness, or its temporary usefulness, was 
in principle false, was a mere transition stage 
of evolution, and must be altered to the core. 
"Time makes ancient good uncouth": in this 
well-known word one might sum up the spirit 
of this modern revolt against moral traditions. 

Now when we review the recent moral 
controversies that express this sort of ques- 
tioning, some of us find ourselves especially 
troubled and bewildered. We all feel that 
if the foundations of the exact sciences are 
to be criticised by the restless spirit of our 
reforming age, the exact sciences are indeed 
well able to take care of themselves. And as 
for religion, — if its fortunes have indeed, 
of late, deeply troubled and perplexed many 
gentle hearts, still both believers and doubters 
have now generally come to view with a cer- 
tain resignation this aspect of the fate of our 
time, whether they regard religious doubt as 

5 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



the result of God's way of dealing with a way- 
ward world, or as a sign of man's transition 
to a higher stage of enlightenment. 

But restlessness regarding the very founda- 
tions of morality — that seems to many of us 
especially discouraging. For that concerns 
both the seen and the unseen world, both 
the truths that justify the toil spent upon 
exact science, and the hopes for the love of 
which the religions of men have seemed dear. 
For what is science worth, and what is religion 
worth, if human life itself, for whose ennoble- 
ment science and religion have both labored, 
has no genuine moral standards by which 
one may measure its value? If, then, our 
moral standards themselves are questioned, 
the iron of doubt — so some of us feel — 
seems to enter our very hearts. 

I 

In view, then, of the fact that the modern 
tendency to revise traditions has inevitably 
extended itself, in new ways, to the region 
of morals, I suppose that a study of some of 

6 



NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY 



the foundations of the moral life is a timely 
undertaking. It is such an undertaking that 
I propose as the task of the present course of 
lectures. My purpose, in these discussions, 
is both a philosophical and a practical pur- 
pose. I should indeed be glad, if there were 
time, to attempt, in your company, a systematic 
review of all the main problems of philosoph- 
ical ethics. That is, I should like, were that 
possible, to discuss with you at length the 
nature, the foundation, and the truth of the 
moral law, approaching that problem from 
all those various sides which interest philoso- 
phers. And, as a fact, I shall indeed venture 
to say something, in the course of these lec- 
tures, regarding each of these topics. But 
I well know that there is no space, in eight 
lectures, for any adequate treatment of that 
branch of philosophy which is called Ethics. 
Nor do you come here merely or mainly for 
the sake of hearing what a student of philoso- 
phy chances to think about the problems of his 
own calling. Accordingly, I shall not try, in 
this place, to state to you any system of moral 

7 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

philosophy. Rather is it the other aspect ol 
my purpose in appealing to you — the prac- 
tical aspect, which I must especially try to bear 
in mind throughout these lectures. 

Our age, as I have said, is a good deal per- 
plexed regarding its moral ideals and its stand- 
ards of duty. It has doubts about what is 
really the best plan of human life. This per- 
plexity is not wholly due to any peculiar way- 
wardness of our time, or to any general lack 
of moral seriousness. It is just our moral 
leaders, our reformers, our prophets, who most 
perplex us. Whether these revolutionary moral 
teachers are right or wrong, they beset us, 
they give us no rest, they call in doubt our 
moral judgments, they undertake to "trans- 
mute values." And the result, for many of us, 
is a practical result. It tends to deprive us 
of that confidence which we all need in order to 
be ready to do good works. It threatens to par- 
alyze the effectiveness of many conscientious 
people. Hence any effort to reason calmly 
and constructively about the foundations of the 
moral life may serve, not merely to clarify our 

8 



NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY 

minds, but to give vigor to our deeds. In these 
lectures, then, I shall ask you to think indeed 
about moral problems, but to think for the 
sake of action. I shall try to give you some 
fragments of a moral philosophy; but I shall 
try to justify the philosophy through its appli- 
cation to life. I do not much care whether 
you agree with the letter of any of my philo- 
sophical formulas ; but I do want to bring to 
your consciousness, by means of these formu- 
las, a certain spirit in terms of which you may 
henceforth be helped to interpret the life that 
we all in common need to live. Meanwhile, 
I do not want merely to refute those reformers 
and prophets of whose perplexing assaults 
upon our moral traditions I have just spoken, 
nor yet do I want to join myself with them in 
perplexing you still further. I want, as far as 
I can, to indicate some ways whereby we may 
clarify and simplify our moral situation. 

I indeed agree with the view that, in many 
ways, our traditional moral standards ought to 
be revised. We need a new heaven and a new 
earth. We do well to set out to seek for both, 

9 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



however hard or doubtful may be the quest 
In so far as our restlessness about moral 
matters — our unsettlement — implies a sense 
of this need, it is a good thing. To use a com- 
parison suggested by modern Biblical criticism 
— our conventional morality is indeed a sort 
of Pentateuch, made up of many ancient docu- 
ments. It has often been edited afresh. It 
needs critical reexamination. I am a student 
of philosophy. My principal business has 
always been criticism. I shall propose noth- 
ing in this course which I have not tried to 
submit to critical standards, and to revise 
repeatedly. 

But, on the other hand, I do not believe that 
unsettlement is finality. Nor to my mind is 
the last word of human wisdom this : that the 
truth is inaccessible. Nor yet is the last word 
of wisdom this : that the truth is merely fluent 
and transient. I believe in the eternal. I am 
in quest of the eternal. As to moral stand- 
ards, in particular, I do not like that mere 
homesickness and spiritual estrangement, and 
that confusion of mind about moral ideals, 

xo 



NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY 



which is nowadays too common. I want to 
know the way that leads our human practical 
life homewards, even if that way prove to be 
infinitely long. I am discontented with mere 
discontent. I want, as well as I can, not 
merely to help you to revise some of your 
moral standards, but to help you to give to this 
revision some definitive form and tendency, 
some image and hint of finality. 

Moreover, since moral standards, as An- 
tigone said, are not of to-day or yesterday, 
I believe that revision does not mean, in this 
field, a mere break with the past. I myself 
have spent my life in revising my opinions. 
And yet, whenever I have most carefully re- 
vised my moral standards, I am always able to 
see, upon reviewing my course of thought, 
that at best I have been finding out, in some 
new light, the true meaning that was latent 
in old traditions. Those traditions were often 
better in spirit than the fathers knew. We 
who revise may sometimes be able to see this 
better meaning that was latent in forms such 
as are now antiquated, and perhaps, in their 

u 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

old literal interpretation, even mischievous. 
Revision does not mean mere destruction. We 
can often say to tradition : That which thou 
so west is not quickened except it die. But 
we can sometimes see in the world of opinion 
a sort of resurrection of the dead, — a resur- 
rection wherein what was indeed justly sown 
in dishonor is raised in honor, — glorified, - — - 
and perhaps incorruptible. Let us bury the 
natural body of tradition. What we want is 
its glorified body and its immortal soul. 

II 

I have entitled these lectures, "The Phi- 
losophy of Loyalty/' I may as well confess 
at once that my title was suggested to me, early 
last summer, by a book that I read — a recent 
work by a distinguished ethnologist, Dr. Ru- 
dolf Steinmetz of The Hague, entitled "The 
Philosophy of War." War and loyalty have 
been, in the past, two very closely associated 
ideas. It will be part of the task of these lec- 
tures to break up, so far as I can, in your own 
minds, that ancient and disastrous association, 

12 



NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY 



and to show how much the true conception 
of loyalty has been obscured by viewing the 
warrior as the most typical representative of 
rational loyalty. Steinmetz, however, accepts, 
in this respect, the traditional view. According 
to him, war gives an opportunity for loyal 
devotion so notable and important that, if 
war were altogether abolished, one of the 
greatest goods of civilization would thereby be 
hopelessly lost. I am keenly conscious of the 
sharp contrast between Steinmetz's theory of 
loyalty and my own. I agree with Steinmetz, 
as you will later see, regarding the significance' 
of loyalty as a central principle of the moral 
life. I disagree with him very profoundly as 
to the relation of war both to true loyalty and 
to civilization in general. The very contrast 
has suggested to me the adoption of the form 
of title which Steinmetz has used. 

The phrase, "Philosophy of Loyalty," is 
intended to indicate first, that we are here to 
consider loyalty as an ethical principle. For 
philosophy deals with first principles. And 
secondly, my title means to suggest that we 

13 



THE PHILOSOPHY OP LOYALTY 



are to view the matter critically and dis* 
criminatingly, as well as practically. For 
philosophy is essentially a criticism of life. 
Not everything, then, that calls itself loyalty, 
and not every form of loyalty, shall be put in 
our discussion on the same level with every 
other moral quality that uses or that deserves 
the ancient name in question. Moreover, 
the term " loyalty' ' comes to us as a good old 
popular word, without any exact definition. 
We are hereafter to define our term as pre- 
cisely as possible, yet so as to preserve the 
spirit of the former usage. In estimating the 
place of loyalty in the moral life, we are, more- 
over, to follow neither traditional authority 
nor the voice of private prejudice. We are 
to use our reason as best we can ; for philoso- 
phy is an effort to think out the reasons for 
our opinions. We are not to praise blindly, 
nor to condemn according to our moods. 
Where loyalty seems to be a good, we are to 
see why; when what men call loyalty leads 
them astray, we are to find wherein the fault 
lies. Since loyalty is a relative term, and al- 

14 



NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY 



ways implies that there is some object, some 
cause, to which any given loyalty is to be shown, 
we must consider what are the fitting objects 
of loyalty. In attempting an answer to these 
various questions, our philosophy of loyalty 
must try to delve down to the roots of human 
conduct, the grounds for our moral standards, 
as far as our time permits. 

But when all these efforts have been made 
towards a philosophical treatment of our topic, 
when certain discriminations between true 
and mistaken loyalty have been defined, when 
we have insisted upon the fitting objects of 
loyalty, and have throughout indicated our 
reasons for our theses, there will then stand 
out one great practical lesson, which I shall 
try to illustrate from the start, and to bring 
to its fruition as our lectures close. And the 
lesson will be this : In loyalty, when loyalty is 
properly defined, is the fulfilment of the whole 
moral law. You can truthfully centre your en- 
tire moral world about a rational conception 
of loyalty. Justice, charity, industry, wisdom, 
spirituality, are all definable in terms of 

n 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



enlightened loyalty. And, as I shall maintain, 
this very way of viewing the moral world — 
this deliberate centralization of all the duties 
and of all the virtues about the one conception 
of rational loyalty — is of great service as a 
means of clarifying and simplifying the tangled 
moral problems of our lives and of our age. 

Thus, then, I state the task which our title 
is intended to set before us. The rest of this 
opening lecture must be devoted to clearing 
our way — and to a merely preliminary and 
tentative view of our topic. I must first at- 
tempt a partial and provisional definition of 
the term "loyalty" as I shall use that term. 
I wish that I could begin with a final and ade- 
quate definition; but I cannot. Why I can- 
not, you will see in later lectures. At the mo- 
ment I shall try to direct your minds, as well 
as I can, merely to some of the features that 
are essential to my conception of loyalty. 

Ill 

Loyalty shall mean, according to this pre- 
liminary definition : The willing and practical 

16 



NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY 



and thoroughgoing devotion of a "person to a 
cause. A man is loyal when, first, he has some 
cause to which he is loyal ; when, secondly, he 
willingly and thoroughly devotes himself to 
this cause ; and when, thirdly, he expresses his 
devotion in some sustained and practical way, 
by acting steadily in the service of his cause. 
Instances of loyalty are : The devotion of a 
patriot to his country, when this devotion leads 
him actually to live and perhaps to die for his 
country; the devotion of a martyr to his reli- 
gion; the devotion of a ship's captain to the 
requirements of his office when, after a disaster, 
he works steadily for his ship and for the 
saving of his ship's company until the last 
possible service is accomplished, so that he is 
the last man to leave the ship, and is ready if 
need be to go down with his ship. 

Such cases of loyalty are typical. They 
involve, I have said, the willingness of the loyal 
man to do his service. The loyal man's cause 
is his cause by virtue of the assent of his own 
will. His devotion is his own. He chooses 
it, or, at all events, approves it. Moreover, 
c 17 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



his devotion is a practical one, He does 
something. This something serves his cause. 
Loyalty is never mere emotion. Adoration 
and affection may go with loyalty, but can 
never alone constitute loyalty. Further- 
more, the devotion of the loyal man in- 
volves a sort of restraint or submission of 
his natural desires to his cause. Loyalty 
without self-control is impossible. The loyal 
man serves. That is, he does not merely 
follow his own impulses. He looks to his 
cause for guidance. This cause tells him 
what to do, and he does it. His devotion, 
furthermore, is entire. He is ready to live 
or to die as the cause directs. 

And now for a further word about the hard- 
est part of this preliminary definition of loyalty : 
A loyal man, I have said, has a cause. I do 
not yet say that he has a good cause. He 
might have a bad one. I do not say, as yet, 
what makes a cause a good one, and worthy of 
loyalty. All that is to be considered here- 
after. But this I now premise: If one is 
loyal, he has a cause which he indeed per- 
is 



NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY 



son ally values. Otherwise, how could he be 
devoted to it ? He therefore takes interest in 
the cause, loves it, is well pleased with it. 
On the other hand, loyalty never means the 
mere emotion of love for your cause, and never 
means merely following your own pleasure, 
viewed as your private pleasure and interest. 
For if you are loyal, your cause is viewed by 
you as something outside of you. Or if, like 
your country, your cause includes yourself, 
it is still much larger than your private self. 
It has its own value, so you as a loyal person 
believe. This essential value it would keep 
(so you believe) even if your private interest 
were left out of account. Your cause you 
take, then, to be something objective — some- 
thing that is not your private self. It does not 
get its value merely from your being pleased 
with it. You believe, on the contrary, that 
you love it just because of its own value, which 
it has by itself, even if you die. That is just 
why one may be ready to die for his cause. In 
any case, when the loyal man serves his cause, 
he is not seeking his own private advantage. 

19 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



Moreover, the cause to which a loyal man is 
devoted is never something wholly impersonal. 
It concerns other men. Loyalty is social. If 
one is a loyal servant of a cause, one has at 
least possible fellow-servants. On the other 
hand, since a cause, in general, tends to unite 
the many fellow-servants in one service, it con- 
sequently seems to the loyal man to have a 
sort of impersonal or superpersonal quality 
about it. You can love an individual. But 
you can be loyal only to a tie that binds you 
and others into some sort of unity, and loyal 
to individuals only through the tie. The 
cause to which loyalty devotes itself has always 
this union of the personal and the seemingly 
superindividual about it. It binds many indi- 
viduals into one service. Loyal lovers, for 
instance, are loyal not merely to one another 
as separate individuals, but to their love, to 
their union, which is something more than 
either of them, or even than both of them 
viewed as distinct individuals. 

So much for a preliminary view of what 
loyalty is. Our definition is not complete. 

20 



NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY 



It raises rather than solves problems about the 
nature of loyalty. But thus indeed we get a 
first notion of the general nature of loyalty. 

IV 

But now for a next step. Many people find 
that they have a need of loyalty. Loyalty is 
a good thing for them. If you ask, however, 
why loyalty may be needed by a given man, 
the answer may be very complex. A patriot 
may, in your opinion, need loyalty, first because 
his country needs his service, and, as you add, 
he actually owes this service, and so needs to 
do his duty, viz. to be loyal. This first way 
of stating a given man's need of a given loyalty, 
turns upon asserting that a specific cause 
rightly requires of a certain man a certain 
service. The cause, as one holds, is good 
and worthy. This man actually ought to 
serve just that cause. Hence he stands in 
need of loyalty, and of just this loyalty. 

But in order thus to define this man's need 
of loyalty, you have to determine what causes 
are worthy of loyalty, and why this man ought 

21 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



to serve his own cause. To answer such ques- 
tions would apparently presuppose a whole 
system of morals, — a system which at this 
stage of our argument we have not yet in sight. 

But there is another, — a simpler, and, at 
the outset, a lower way of estimating the value 
of loyalty. One may, for the time, abstract 
from all questions as to the value of causes. 
Whether a man is loyal to a good cause or to 
a bad cause, his own personal attitude, when 
he is loyal, has a certain general quality. 
Whoever is loval, whatever be his cause, is 
devoted, is active, surrenders his private self- 
will, controls himself, is in love with his cause, 
and believes in it. The loyal man is thus in 
a certain state of mind which has its own value 
for himself. To live a loyal life, whatever be 
one's cause, is to live in a way which is certainly 
free from many well-known sources of inner 
dissatisfaction. Thus hesitancy is often cor- 
rected by loyalty; for the cause plainly tells 
the loyal man what to do. Loyalty, again, 
tends to unify life, to give it centre, fixity, 
stability, 

22 



NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY 



Well, these aspects of loyalty are, so far 
as they go, good for the loyal man. We may 
therefore define our need of loyalty in a 
certain preliminary way. We may take what 
is indeed a lower view of loyalty, regarding 
it, for the moment, in deliberate abstraction 
from the cause to which one is loyal. We 
may thus regard loyalty, for the moment, 
just as a personal attitude, which is good for 
the loyal man himself. 

Now this lower view of our need of loyalty 
is the one to which in the rest of this lecture I 
want you to attend. All that I now say is 
preliminary. Results belong later. Let us 
simply abstract from the question whether a 
man's cause is objectively worthy of his loyalty 
or not. Let us ask: What does a man gain 
by being loyal ? Suppose that some cause, 
outside of and also inclusive of his private 
self, so appeals to a man that he believes it to 
be worthy, and becomes heartily loyal co it. 
What good does he get personally out of his 
loyalty? In order to answer this question, 
even in this preliminary way, I must indeed go 

23 



THE PHILOSOPHY OP LOYALTY 



rather far afield, and define for you, still very 
tentatively, one of the best-known and hardest 
of the problems of our personal life. 

V 

What do we live for? What is our duty? 
What is the true ideal of life? What is the 
true difference between right and wrong? 
What is the true good which we all need? 
Whoever begins seriously to consider such 
questions as these soon observes certain great 
truths about the moral life which he must take 
into account if his enterprise is to succeed, 
that is, if he is ever to answer these questions. 

The first truth is this : We all of us first 
learned about what we ought to do, about 
what our ideal should be, and in general about 
the moral law, through some authority external 
to our own wills. Our teachers, our parents, 
our playmates, society, custom, or perhaps 
some church, — these taught us about one 
or another aspect of right and wrong. The 
moral law came to us from without, It 

24 



NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY 

often seemed to us, in so far, something other 
than our will, something threatening or socially 
compelling, or externally restraining. In so 
far as our moral training is still incomplete, 
the moral law may at any moment have to 
assume afresh this air of an external authority 
merely in order to win our due attention. But 
if we have learned the moral law, or any part 
of it, and if we do not ask any longer how we 
first learned, or how we may still have to learn 
afresh our duty, but if, on the contrary, we 
rather ask: "What reason can I now give to 
myself why a given act is truly right? What 
reason can I give why my duty is my duty?" 
— then, indeed, we find that no external au- 
thority, viewed merely as external, can give 
one any reason why an act is truly right or 
wrong. Only a calm and reasonable view of 
what it is that I myself really will, — only 
this can decide such a question. My duty is 
simply my own will brought to my clear self- 
consciousness. That which I can rightly view 
as good for me is simply the object of my own 
deepest desire set plainly before my insight. 

25 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



For your own will and your own desire, once 
fully brought to self -consciousness, furnish the 
only valid reason for you to know what is 
right and good. 

This comment which I now make upon the 
nature of the moral law is familiar to every 
serious student of ethics. In one form or 
another this fact, that the ultimate moral au- 
thority for each of us is determined by our own 
rational will, is admitted even by apparently 
extreme partisans of authority. Socrates long 
ago announced the principle in question when 
he taught that no man is willingly base. Plato 
and Aristotle employed it in developing their 
ethical doctrines. When St. Augustine, in a 
familiar passage in his Confessions, regards 
God's will as that in which, and in which alone, 
our wills can find rest and peace, he indeed 
makes God's will the rule of life ; but he also 
shows that the reason why each of us, if en- 
lightened, recognizes the divine will as right, 
is that, in Augustine's opinion, God has so 
made us for himself that our own wills are by 
nature inwardly restless until they rest in har- 

26 



NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY 



mony with God's will. Our restlessness, then, 
so long as we are out of this harmony, gives 
us the reason why we find it right, if we are 
enlightened, to surrender our self-will. 

If you want to find out, then, what is right 
and what is good for you, bring your own will 
to self -consciousness. Your duty is what you 
yourself will to do in so far as you clearly dis- 
cover who you are, and what your place in the 
world is. This is, indeed, a first principle of 
all ethical inquiry. Kant called it the Prin- 
ciple of the Autonomy or self-direction of the 
rational will of each moral being. 

But now there stands beside this first prin- 
ciple a second principle, equally inevitable and 
equally important. This principle is, that I 
can never find out what my own will is by 
merely brooding over my natural desires, or 
by following my momentary caprices. For by 
nature I am a sort of meeting place of count- 
less streams of ancestral tendency. From 
moment to moment, if you consider me apart 
from my training, I am a collection of im- 
pulses. There is no one desire that is always 
V 27 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



present to me. Left to myself alone, I can 
never find out what my will is. 

You may interpose here the familiar thesis 
that there is one desire which I always have, 
namely, the desire to escape from pain and to 
get pleasure. But as soon as you try to ad- 
just this thesis to the facts of life, it is a thesis 
which simplifies nothing, and which at best 
simply gives me back again, under new names, 
that chaos of conflicting passions and in- 
terests which constitutes, apart from training, 
my natural life. What we naturally desire 
is determined for us by our countless instincts 
and by whatever training they have received. 
We want to breathe, to eat, to walk, to run, 
to speak, to see, to hear, to love, to fight, and, 
amongst other things, we want to be more or 
less reasonable. Now, if one of these instinc- 
tive wants of ours drives us at any moment 
to action, we normally take pleasure in such 
action, in so far as it succeeds. For action 
in accordance with desire means relief from 
tension ; and that is usually accompanied with 
pleasure. On the other hand, a thwarted 

28 



NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY 

activity gives us pain. But only under special 
circumstances does this resulting pleasure or 
pain of the successful or of the hindered activ- 
ity come to constitute a principal object of our 
desire. We all do like pleasure, and we all 
do shun pain. But a great deal of what we 
desire is desired by instinct, apart from the 
memory or the expectation of pleasure and 
pain, and often counter to the warnings that 
pleasure and pain have given to us. It is 
normal to desire food because one is hungry, 
rather than because one loves the pleasures of 
the table. It is water that the thirsty man 
in the desert longs for, rather than pleasure, 
and rather than even mere relief from pain as 
such. For much of the pain appears to his 
consciousness as largely due to his longing for 
water. Pain, then, is indeed an evil, but it is 
in part secondary to thwarted desire; while, 
when pain appears as a brute fact of our 
feelings, which we indeed hate, such pain is 
even then only one amongst the many ills of 
life, only one of the many undesirable objects. 
The burnt child, indeed, dreads the fire; 

29 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



but the climbing child, instinctively loving the 
ways of his remote arboreal ancestors, is little 
deterred by the pain of an occasional fall. 

Furthermore, if I even admitted that I 
always desire pleasure and relief from pain, 
and nothing else, I should not learn from such 
a principle what it is that, on the whole, I 
am to will to do, in order to express my desire 
for pleasure, and in order to escape from 
pain. For no art is harder than the art of 
pleasure seeking. I can never learn that art 
alone by myself. And so I cannot define my 
own will, and hence cannot define my duty, 
merely in terms of pleasure and pain. 

VI 

So far, then, we have a rather paradoxical 
situation before us. Yet it is the moral situa- 
tion of every one of us. If I am to know my 
duty, I must consult my own reasonable will. 
I alone can show myself why I view this or this 
as my duty. But on the other hand, if I 
merely look within myself to find what it is 

30 



NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY 



that I will, my own private individual nature, 
apart from due training, never gives me any 
answer to the question : What do I will ? 
By nature I am a victim of my ancestry, a 
mass of world-old passions and impulses, de- 
siring and suffering in constantly new ways as 
my circumstances change, and as one or an- 
other of my natural impulses comes to the 
front. By nature, then, apart from a specific 
training, I have no personal will of my own. 
One of the principal tasks of my life is to learn 
to have a will of my own. To learn your own 
will, — yes, to create your own will, is one of 
the largest of your human undertakings. 

Here, then, is the paradox. I, and only I, 
whenever I come to my own, can morally 
justify to myself my own plan of life. No 
outer authority can ever give me the true rea- 
son for my duty. Yet I, left to myself, can 
never find a plan of life. I have no inborn 
ideal naturally present within myself. By 
nature I simply go on crying out in a sort of 
chaotic self-will, according as the momentary 
play of desire determines. 

31 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

Whence, then, can I learn any plan of life ? 
The moral education of any civilized person 
easily reminds you how this question is, in 
one respect, very partially, but, so far as 
ordinary training goes, constantly answered. 
One gets one's various plans of life suggested 
through the models that are set before each 
one of us by his fellows. Plans of life first 
come to us in connection with our endless 
imitative activities. These imitative pro- 
cesses begin in our infancy, and run on 
through our whole life. We learn to play, 
to speak, to enter into our social realm, to 
take part in the ways and so in the life of 
mankind. This imitative social activity is 
itself due to our instincts as social beings. 
But in turn the social activities are the ones 
that first tend to organize all of our instincts, 
to give unity to our passions and impulses, 
to transform our natural chaos of desires 
into some sort of order — usually, indeed, a 
very imperfect order. It is our social exist- 
ence, then, as imitative beings, — it is this 
that suggests to us the sorts of plans of life 

32 



NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY 



which we get when we learn a calling, when 
we find a business in life, when we discover 
our place in the social world. And so our 
actual plans of life, namely, our callings, 
our more or less settled daily activities, come 
to us from without. We in so far learn what 
our own will is by first imitating the wills of 
others. 

Yet no, — this, once more, is never the 
whole truth about our social situation, and is 
still less the whole truth about our moral 
situation. By ourselves alone, we have said, 
we can never discover in our own inner life 
any one plan of life that expresses our genuine 
will. So then, we have said, all of our plans 
get suggested to us by the social order in 
which we grow up. But on the other hand, 
our social training gives us a mass of varying 
plans of life, — plans that are not utterly 
chaotic, indeed, but imperfectly ordered, — 
mere routine, not ideal life. Moreover, social 
training tends not only to teach us the way of 
other people, but to heighten by contrast our 
vague natural sense of the importance of 

D 33 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

having our own way. Social training stimu* 
lates the will of the individual self, and also 
teaches this self customs and devices for 
self-expression. We never merely imitate. 
Conformity attracts, but also wearies us. 
Meanwhile, even by imitation, we often learn 
how to possess, and then to carry out, our 
own self-will. For instance, we learn speech 
first by imitation; but henceforth we love to 
hear ourselves talk; and our whole plan of 
life gets affected accordingly. Speech has, 
indeed, its origin in social conformity. Yet 
the tongue is an unruly member, and wags 
rebelliously. Teach men customs, and you 
equip them with weapons for expressing their 
own personalities. As you train the social 
being, you make use of his natural submis- 
siveness. But as a result of your training he 
forms plans ; he interprets these plans with 
reference to his own personal interests ; he 
becomes aware who he is; and he may end 
by becoming, if not original, then at least 
obstreperous. And thus society is con- 
stantly engaged in training up children who 

34 



NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY 



may, and often do, rebel against their mother. 
Social conformity gives us social power. 
Such power brings to us a consciousness of 
who and what we are. Now, for the first 
time, we begin to have a real will of our own. 
And hereupon we may discover this will to 
be in sharp conflict with the will of society. 
This is what normally happens to most of us, 
for a time at least, in youth. 

You see, so far, how the whole process 
upon which man's moral life depends in- 
volves this seemingly endless play of inner 
and outer. How shall my duty be defined? 
Only by my own will, whenever that will is 
brought to rational self -consciousness. But 
what is my will ? By nature I know not ; 
for by birth I am a mere eddy in the turbulent 
stream of inherited human passion. How, 
then, shall I get a will of my own? Only 
through social training. That indeed gives 
me plans, for it teaches me the settled ways 
of my world. Yet no, —for such training 
really teaches me rather the arts whereby I 
may express myself. It makes me clever, 

35 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

ambitious, often rebellious, and in so far it 
teaches me how to plan opposition to the 
social order. The circular process thus 
briefly indicated goes on throughout the lives 
of many of us. It appears in new forms at 
various stages of our growth. At any mo- 
ment we may meet new problems of right 
and wrong, relating to our plans of life. We 
hereupon look within, at what we call our own 
conscience, to find out what our duty is. 
But, as we do so, we discover, too often, what 
wayward and blind guides our own hearts so 
far are. So we look without, in order to un- 
derstand better the ways of the social world. 
We cannot see the inner light. Let us try the 
outer one. These ways of the world appeal 
to our imitativeness, and so we learn from 
the other people how we ourselves are in this 
case to live. Yet no, — this very learning 
often makes us aware of our personal contrast 
with other people, and so makes us self-con- 
scious, individualistic, critical, rebellious; and 
again we are thrown back on ourselves for 
guidance. Seeing the world's way afresh, I 

36 



NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY 

see that it is not my way. I revive. I assert 
myself. My duty, I say, is my own. And 
so, perhaps, I go back again to my own way- 
ward heart. 

It is this sort of process which goes on, 
sometimes in a hopelessly circular way, when, 
in some complicated situation, you are mor- 
ally perplexed, and after much inner brood- 
ing give up deciding by yourself and appeal 
to friends for advice. The advice at first 
pleases you, but soon may arouse your self- 
will more than before. You may become, 
as a result, more wayward and sometimes 
more perplexed, the longer you continue 
this sort of inquiry. We all know what it is 
to seek advice, just with the result of finding 
out what it is that we do not want to do. 

Neither within nor without, then, do I find 
what seems to me a settled authority, — a 
settled and harmonious plan of life, —unless, 
indeed, one happy sort of union takes place 
between the inner and the outer, between my 
social world and myself, between my natural 
waywardness and the ways of my fellows. 

37 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



This happy union is the one that takes place 
whenever my mere social conformity, my 
docility as an imitative creature, turns into 
exactly that which, in these lectures, I shall 
call loyalty. Let us consider what happens 
in such cases. 

VII 

Suppose a being whose social conformity 
has been sufficient to enable him to learn 
many skilful social arts, — arts of speech, of 
prowess in contest, of influence over other 
men. Suppose that these arts have at the 
same time awakened this man's pride, his 
self-confidence, his disposition to assert him- 
self. Such a man will have in him a good 
deal of what you can well call social will. 
He will be no mere anarchist. He will have 
been trained into much obedience. He will 
be no natural enemy of society, unless, indeed, 
fortune has given him extraordinary oppor- 
tunities to win his way without scruples. On 
the other hand, this man must acquire a good 
deal of self-will. He becomes fond of success, 

38 



NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY 



of mastery, of his own demands. To be sure, 
he can find within himself no one naturally 
sovereign will. He can so far find only a 
general determination to define some way of 
his own, and to have his own way. Hence 
the conflicts of social will and self-will are 
inevitable, circular, endless, so long as this is 
the whole story of the man's life. By merely 
consulting convention, on the one hand, and 
his disposition to be somebody, on the other 
hand, this man can never find any one final 
and consistent plan of life, nor reach any one 
definition of his duty. 

But now suppose that there appears in this 
man's life some one of the greater social pas- 
sions, such as patriotism well exemplifies. 
Let his country be in danger. Let his ele- 
mental passion for conflict hereupon fuse 
with his brotherly love for his own country- 9 
men into that fascinating and blood-thirsty 
form of humane but furious ecstasy, which is 
called the war-spirit. The mood in question 
may or may not be justified by the passing 
circumstances. For that I now care not. At 

39 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



its best the war-spirit is no very clear or ra- 
tional state of anybody's mind. But one 
reason why men may love this spirit is that 
when it comes, it seems at once to define a 
plan of life, — a plan which solves the con- 
flicts of self-will and conformity. This plan 
has two features: (1) it is through and 
through a social plan, obedient to the gen- 
eral will of one's country, submissive; (2) it 
is through and through an exaltation of the 
self, of the inner man, who now feels glori- 
fied through his sacrifice, dignified in his self- 
surrender, glad to be his country's servant 
and martyr, — yet sure that through this very 
readiness for self-destruction he wins the 
rank of hero. 

Well, if the man whose case we are suppos- 
ing gets possessed by some such passion as 
this, he wins for the moment the conscious- 
ness of what I call loyalty. This loyalty no 
longer knows anything about the old circular 
conflicts of self-will and of conformity. The 
self, at such moments, looks indeed outwards 
for its plan of life. "The country needs me," 

40 



NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY 



it says. It looks, meanwhile, inwards for 
the inspiring justification of this plan. 
"Honor, the hero's crown, the soldier's death, 
the patriot's devotion — these," it says, "are 
my will. I am not giving up this will of 
mine. It is my pride, my glory, my self- 
assertion, to be ready at my country's call." 
And now there is no conflict of outer and 
inner. 

How wise or how enduring or how prac- 
tical such a passion may prove, I do not 
yet consider. What I point out is that this 
war-spirit, for the time at least, makes self- 
sacrifice seem to be self-expression, makes 
obedience to the country's call seem to be 
the proudest sort of display of one's own pow- 
ers. Honor now means submission, and to 
obey means to have one's way. Power and 
service are at one. Conformity is no longer 
opposed to having one's own will. One has 
no will but that of the country. 

As a mere fact of human nature, then, there 
are social passions which actually tend to do 
at once two things: (1) to intensify our self* 

41 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



consciousness, to make us more than ever 
determined to express our own will and more 
than ever sure of our own rights, of our own 
strength, of our dignity, of our power, of our 
value; (2) to make obvious to us that this 
our will has no purpose but to do the will of 
some fascinating social power. This social 
power is the cause to which we are loyal. 

Loyalty, then, fixes our attention upon some 
one cause, bids us look without ourselves to 
see what this unified cause is, shows us thus 
some one plan of action, and then says to us, 
"In this cause is your life, your will, your 
opportunity, your fulfilment." 

Thus loyalty, viewed merely as a personal 
attitude, solves the paradox of our ordinary 
existence, by showing us outside of ourselves 
the cause which is to be served, and inside of 
ourselves the will which delights to do this 
service, and which is not thwarted but en- 
riched and expressed in such service. 

I have used patriotism and the war-spirit 
merely as a first and familiar illustration of 
loyalty. But now, as we shall later see, there 

42 



NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY 



is no necessary connection between loyalty 
and war; and there are many other forms of 
loyalty besides the patriotic forms. Loyalty 
has its domestic, its religious, its commercial, 
its professional forms, and many other forms 
as well. The essence of it, whatever forms 
it may take, is, as I conceive the matter, this : 
Since no man can find a plan of life by merely 
looking within his own chaotic nature, he has 
to look without, to the world of social conven- 
tions, deeds, and causes. Now, a loyal man 
is one who has found, and who sees, neither 
mere individual fellow-men to be loved or 
hated, nor mere conventions, nor customs, 
nor laws to be obeyed, but some social cause, 
or some system of causes, so rich, so well knit, 
and, to him, so fascinating, and withal so 
kindly in its appeal to his natural self-will, 
that he says to his cause: "Thy will is mine 
and mine is thine. In thee I do not lose but 
find myself, living intensely in proportion as 
I live for thee." If one could find such a 
cause, and hold it for his lifetime before his 
mind, clearly observing it, passionately loving 

43 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

it, and yet calmly understanding it, and stead- 
ily and practically serving it, he would have 
one plan of life, and this plan of life would 
be his own plan, his own will set before him, 
expressing all that his self-will has ever sought. 
Yet this plan would also be a plan of obedience, 
because it would mean living for the cause. 

Now, in all ages of civilized life there have 
been people who have won in some form a 
consciousness of loyalty, and who have held 
to such a consciousness through life. Such 
people may or may not have been right in 
their choice of a cause. But at least they have 
exemplified through their loyalty one feature of 
a rational moral life. They have known what 
it was to have unity of purpose. 

And again, the loyal have known what it 
was to be free from moral doubts and scruples. 
Their cause has been their conscience. It 
has told them what to do. They have lis- 
tened and obeyed, not because of what they 
took to be blind convention, not because of a 
fear of external authority, not even because of 
what seemed to themselves any purely pri 

44 



NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY 

vate and personal intuition, but because, 
when they have looked first outwards at their 
cause, and then inwards at themselves, they 
have found themselves worthless in their own 
eyes, except when viewed as active, as confi- 
dently devoted, as willing instruments of 
their cause. Their cause has forbidden them 
to doubt; it has said: "You are mine, you 
cannot do otherwise." And they have said 
to the cause: "I am, even of my own will, 
thine. I have no will except thy will. Take 
me, use me, control me, and even thereby 
fulfil me and exalt me." That is again the 
speech of the devoted patriots, soldiers, moth- 
ers, and martyrs of our race. They have had 
the grace of this willing, this active loyalty. 

Now, people loyal in this sense have surely 
existed in the world, and, as you all know, the 
loyal still exist amongst us. And I beg you 
not to object to me, at this point, that such 
devoted people have often been loyal to very 
bad causes; or that different people have 
been loyal to causes which were in deadly war 
with one another, so that loyal people must 

45 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

often have been falsely guided. I beg you, 
above all, not to interpose here the objection 
that our modern doubters concerning moral 
problems simply cannot at present see to 
what one cause they ought to be loyal, so that 
just herein, just in our inability to see a fitting 
and central object of loyalty, lies the root of 
our modern moral confusion and distraction. 
All those possible objections are indeed per- 
fectly fair considerations. I shall deal with 
them in due time ; and I am just as earnestly 
aware of them as you can be. But just now 
we are getting our first glimpse of our future 
philosophy of loyalty. All that you can say 
of the defects of loyalty leaves still untouched 
the one great fact that, if you want to find 
a way of living which surmounts doubts, and 
centralizes your powers, it must be some such 
a way as all the loyal in common have trodden, 
since first loyalty was known amongst men. 
What form of loyalty is the right one, we are 
hereafter to see. But unless you can find 
some sort of loyalty, you cannot find unity 
and peace in your active living. You must 

46 



NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY 

find, then, a cause that is really worthy of the 
sort of devotion that the soldiers, rushing 
cheerfully to certain death, have felt for 
their clan or for their country, and that the 
martyrs have shown on behalf of their faith. 
This cause must be indeed rational, worthy, 
and no object of a false devotion. But once 
found, it must become your conscience, must 
tell you the truth about your duty, and must 
unify, as from without and from above, your 
motives, your special ideals, and your plans. 
You ought, I say, to find such a cause, if in- 
deed there be any ought at all. And this 
is my first hint of our moral code. 

But you repeat, perhaps in bewilderment, 
your question: "Where, in our distracted 
modern world, in this time when cause wars 
with cause, and when all old moral standards 
are remorselessly criticised and doubted, are 
we to find such a cause — a cause, all-embrac- 
ing, definite, rationally compelling, supreme, 
certain, and fit to centralize life? What 
cause is there that for us would rationally 
justify a martyr's devotion?" I reply: "A 

47 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

perfectly simple consideration, derived from 
a study of the very spirit of loyalty itself, as 
this spirit is manifested by all the loyal, will 
soon furnish to us the unmistakable answer 
to this question. " For the moment we have 
won our first distant glimpse of what I mean 
by the general nature of loyalty, and by our 
common need of loyalty. 




48 



II 

INDIVIDUALISM 



LECTURE II 



INDIVIDUALISM 

IN my opening lecture I undertook to 
define the personal attitude which I 
called loyalty, and to show that, for our own 
individual good, we all need loyalty, and need 
to find causes to which we can be loyal. This 
was but the beginning of our philosophy of 
loyalty. Before I take my next step, I must 
ask you briefly to review the results that we 
have already reached. 

I 

By loyalty, as you remember, I mean in this 
preliminary view of loyalty, the willing and 
practical and thoroughgoing devotion of a 
person to a cause. By a cause that is adapted 
to call forth loyalty I mean, for the first, 
something which seems to the loyal person 
to be larger than his private self, and so to be, 
in some respect, external to his purely in- 

51 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

dividual will. This cause must, in the second 
place, unite him with other persons by some 
social tie, such as a personal friendship, or 
his family, or the state may, in a given case, 
represent. The cause, therefore, to which 
the loyal man is devoted, is something that 
appears to him to be at once personal (since 
it concerns both himself and other people), 
and impersonal, or rather, if regarded from 
a purely human point of view, superpersonal, 
because it links several human selves, perhaps 
a vast number of selves, into some higher 
social unity. You cannot be loyal to a merely 
impersonal abstraction; and you also cannot 
be loyal simply to a collection of various sepa- 
rate persons, viewed merely as a collection. 
Where there is an object of loyalty, there is, 
then, an union of various selves into one life. 
This union constitutes a cause to which one 
may indeed be loyal, if such is his disposition. 
And such an union of many in one, if known 
to anybody for whom a person means merely 
a human person, appears to be something 
impersonal or superpersonal, just because it 

52 



INDIVIDUALISM 



is more than all those separate and private 
personalities whom it joins. Yet it is also 
intensely personal, because the union is in- 
deed an union of selves, and so not a merely 
artificial abstraction. 

That such causes and that a thoroughgoing, 
willing, practical devotion to them, such as 
our definition of loyalty demands — that, I 
say, such things exist in the world, I tried at 
the last time to illustrate to you. My illus- 
trations were inadequate; for it is simply 
impossible to show you briefly how Protean 
the forms of human loyalty are, and yet how 
similar, amidst all this endless variety of 
forms, the spirit of loyalty remains, whatever 
the causes in question may be, and whoever 
the loyal people are. We began, of course, 
with marked, traditional, and familiar illus- 
trations. The loyal captain, steadfastly stand- 
ing by his sinking ship until his last possible 
duty for the service to which he belongs has 
been accomplished ; the loyal patriot, eager to 
devote every power to living, and, if need be, 
to dying for his endangered country; the 

53 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

loyal religious martyr, faithful unto death, — 
these are indeed impressive and typical in- 
stances of loyalty; but they are not the only 
possible instances. Anybody who, for a time, 
is in charge of the lives of others (for instance, 
any one who takes a party of children on a 
pleasure trip) may have the opportunity to 
possess and to show as genuine a loyalty as 
does the true-hearted captain of the sinking 
ship. For danger is everywhere, and to be in 
charge of life is always an occasion for loyalty. 
Anybody who has friends may devote his life 
to some cause which his friendship defines 
for him and makes, in his eyes, sacred. Any- 
body who has given his word in a serious mat- 
ter may come to think himself called upon to 
sacrifice every private advantage in order to 
keep his word. Thus, then, anything which 
can link various people by fixed social ties 
may suggest to somebody the opportunity for 
a lifelong loyalty. The loyal are, therefore, 
to be found in all orders of society. They 
may be of very various degrees of intelligence, 
of power, of effectiveness. Wherever there 

54 



INDIVIDUALISM 



are mothers and brethren, and kindred of 
any degree, and social organizations of any 
type ; wherever men accept offices, or pledge 
their word, or, as in the pursuit of science or 
of art, cooperate in the search for truth and 
for beauty, — there are to be found causes 
which may appeal to the loyal interest of 
somebody. Loyalty may thus exist amongst 
the lowliest and amongst the loftiest of man- 
kind. The king and the peasant, the saint 
and the worldling, all have their various op- 
portunities for loyalty. The practical man 
of the world and the seemingly lonely student 
of science may be equally loyal. 

But whatever the cause to which one is 
loyal, and whoever it be that is loyal, the 
spirit of loyalty is always the one which our 
preliminary definition set forth, and which 
our former discussion attempted more pre- 
cisely to describe. Whenever a cause, beyond 
your private self, greater than you are, — a 
cause social in its nature and capable of link- 
ing into one the wills of various individuals, 
a cause thus at once personal and, from the 

55 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

purely human point of view, superpersonal, — ■ 
whenever, I say, such a cause so arouses your 
interest that it appears to you worthy to be 
served with all your might, with all your soul, 
with all your strength, then this cause awakens 
in you the spirit of loyalty. If you act out 
this spirit, you become, in fact, loyal. And 
upon the unity of this spirit, amidst all its 
countless varieties, our future argument will 
depend. It is essential to that argument to 
insist that the humblest, as well as the wisest 
and mightiest of men, may share in this one 
spirit. 

Now, loyalty, thus defined, is, as we have 
maintained, something which we all, as hu- 
man beings, need. That is, we all need to 
find causes which shall awaken our loyalty. 
I tried to indicate to you at the last time the 
grounds for this our common need for loyalty. 
In order to do so, I began with a confessedly 
lower view of loyalty. I have asked you, for 
the time, in this opening study, to abstract al- 
together from the cause to which any man is 
loyal, to leave out of account whether that 

56 



INDIVIDUALISM 



cause is or is not in your opinion worthy, and 
to begin by considering what good the loyal 
man gets out of the personal attitude of loyalty, 
whatever be his cause. Only by thus begin- 
ning can we prepare the way for a higher view 
of loyalty. 

Loyalty, I have said, be the cause worthy 
or unworthy, is for the loyal man a good, 
just as, even if his beloved be unworthy, love 
may in its place still be a good thing for a 
lover. And loyalty is for the loyal man not 
only a good, but for him chief amongst all the 
moral goods of his life, because it furnishes to 
him a personal solution of the hardest of 
human practical problems, the problem : "For 
what do I live ? Why am I here ? For what 
am I good ? Why am I needed ?" 

The natural man, more or less vaguely and 
unconsciously, asks such questions as these. 
But if he looks merely within his natural self, 
he cannot answer them. Within himself he 
finds vague cravings for happiness, a chaos 
of desires, a medley of conflicting instincts. 
He has come — 

57 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



" Into this universe, the why not knowing, 
Nor whence, like water, willy-nilly flowing." 

He must, then, in any case consult society in 
order to define the purpose of his life. The 
social order, however, taken as it comes, 
gives him customs, employment, conventions, 
laws, and advice, but no one overmastering 
ideal. It controls him, but often by the very 
show of authority it also inflames his self- 
will. It rebukes and amuses ; it threatens 
and praises him by turns; but it leaves him 
to find out and to justify the sense of his own 
life as he can. It solves for him no ultimate 
problems of life, so long as his loyalty is 
unawakened. 

Only a cause, then, an absorbing and fas- 
cinating social cause, which by his own will 
and consent comes to take possession of his 
life, as the spirits that a magician summons 
might by the magician's own will and con- 
sent take control of the fortunes of the one 
who has called for their aid, — only a cause, 
dignified by the social unity that it gives to 
many human lives, but rendered also vital 

58 



INDIVIDUALISM 



for the loyal man by the personal affection 
which it awakens in his heart, only such 
a cause can unify his outer and inner world. 
When such unity comes, it takes in him the 
form of an active loyalty. Whatever cause 
thus appeals to a man meets therefore one 
of his deepest personal needs, and in fact the 
very deepest of his moral needs ; namely, the 
need of a life task that is at once voluntary 
and to his mind worthy. 

II 

So far the former discussion led us. But 
already, at this point, an objection arises, — ■ 
or rather, there arise a whole host of objections, 
— whereof I must take account before you 
will be ready to comprehend the philosophy 
of loyalty which I am to propose in later lec- 
tures. These objections, familiar in the present 
day, come from the partisans of certain forms 
of Individualism which in our modern world 
are so prevalent. I shall devote this lecture 
to a study of the relations of the spirit of loyalty 
to the spirit of individualism. Individualism 

59 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



is as Protean as loyalty. Hence my task in- 
volves meeting various very different objections. 

Somewhat more than a year since, I was 
attempting to state in the presence of a com- 
pany of young people my arguments for 
loyalty. I was trying to tell that company, 
as I am trying to tell you, how much we all 
need some form of loyalty as a centralizing 
motive in our personal lives. I was also de- 
ploring the fact that, in our modern American 
life, there are so many social motives that seem 
to take away from people the true spirit of 
loyalty, and to leave them distracted, unsettled 
as to their moral standards, uncertain why or 
for what they live. After I had said my word, 
my hearers were invited to discuss the ques- 
tion. Amongst those who responded was a 
very earnest youth, the son of a Russian immi- 
grant. My words had awakened my young 
friend's righteous indignation. "Loyalty/ 5 so 
he in effect said, "has been in the past one of 
humanity's most disastrous failings and weak- 
nesses. Tyrants have used the spirit of loyalty 
as their principal tool. I am glad," he went 

60 



INDIVIDUALISM 



on, "that we are outgrowing loyalty, whatever 
its forms or whatever the causes that it serves. 
What we want in the future is the training of 
individual judgment. We want enlighten- 
ment and independence. Let us have done 
with loyalty." 

I need hardly remark that my opponent's 
earnestness, his passion for the universal tri- 
umph of individual freedom, his plainness of 
speech, his hatred of oppression, were them- 
selves symptoms of a very loyal spirit. For he 
had his cause. That was plain. It was a 
social cause, — the one need of the many for 
release from the oppressor. He spoke like a 
man who was devoted to that cause. I 
honored his loyalty to humanity, in so far as 
he understood the needs of his fellows. His 
spirit, then, as he spoke, simply illustrated 
my own thesis. He was awake, resolute, 
eager. He had his ideal. And his loyalty to 
the cause of the oppressed had given to him this 
fine self-possession. He was a living instance 
of my view of the value of loyalty to the loyal 
man. 

61 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



So, in fact, he was not my opponent. But 
he thought that he was. And his view of 
loyalty, his conception that loyalty is by its 
nature, as a spirit of devotion and of self- 
sacrifice for a cause, necessarily a spirit of sub- 
servience, of slavish submission, — this view, 
I say, although it was clearly refuted by the 
very existence of his own loyalty to the cause 
of the relief of the people from the oppressor, 
was still a misunderstanding of himself and of 
life, — a misunderstanding such as is nowa- 
days only too common. Here, then, is one 
form which current objections to the spirit of 
loyalty often take. 

Another and a decidedly different objection 
to my own views about loyalty was expressed to 
me, also within the past year, by a friend high 
in official position in a distant community, — 1 
a teacher who has charge of many youth, and 
who is profoundly concerned for their moral 
welfare. "I wish," he said, "that, if you 
address the youth who are under my charge, 
you would tell them that loyalty to their vari- 
ous organizations, to their clubs, to their secret 

62 



INDIVIDUALISM 



societies, to their own student body generally, 
is no excuse for mischief-makers, and gives to 
loyal students no right to encourage one an- 
other to do mischief, and then to stand to- 
gether to shield offenders for the sake of 
loyalty. Loyalty hereabouts," he in substance 
went on, speaking of his own community, 
"is a cloak to cover a multitude of sins. What 
these youth need is the sense that each individ- 
ual has his own personal duty, and should de- 
velop his own conscience, and should not look 
to loyalty to excuse him from individual re- 
sponsibility." 

The objection which was thus in substance 
contained in my friend's words, was of course 
partly an objection to the special causes to 
which these students were loyal ; that is, it was 
an objection to their clubs, and to their views 
about the special rights of the student body. 
In so far, of course, this objection does not 
yet concern us; for I am not now estimating 
the worth of men's causes, but am considering 
only the inner value of the loyal spirit to the 
man who has that spirit, whatever be the cause 

63 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



to which this man is loyal. In part, however, 
this objection was founded upon a well-known 
form of ethical individualism, and is an objec- 
tion that does here concern us. For his own 
good, so my critic seemed to hold, each man 
needs to develop his own individual sense of 
personal duty and of responsibility. Loyalty, 
as my critic further held, tends to take the life 
out of a young man's conscience, because it 
makes him simply look outside of himself to 
see what his cause requires him to do. In 
other words, loyalty seems to be opposed to 
the development of that individual auton- 
omy of the moral will which, as I told you 
in the last lecture, Kant insists upon, and 
which all moralists must indeed emphasize 
as one of our highest goods. If I look to 
my cause to tell me what to do, am I not 
resigning my moral birthright ? Must I not 
always judge my own duty? Now, does 
not loyalty tend to make me ask my club 
or my other social cause simply to tell me 
what to do ? 

And yet, as you see, even the objector who 

64 



INDIVIDUALISM 



pointed out this difficulty about loyalty cannot 
have been as much my opponent as he seemed 
to believe that he was. For he himself, by 
virtue of his own autonomous choice of his 
career, is a very loyal teacher, devoted to his 
office, and loyal to the true welfare of his stu- 
dents as he sees that welfare. I am sure that 
his spirit must be the very loyalty which I 
have been describing to you. He is an inde- 
pendent sort of man, who has chosen his cause 
and is now profoundly loyal. Otherwise, how 
could he love, as he does, the hard tasks of his 
office and live, as he does, in his devotion to 
that office, accepting its demands as his own ? 
He works like a slave at his own task, — and 
of course he works lovingly. Yet he seemed 
to condemn the loyalty of his students to their 
clubs as essentially slavish. Is there not some 
misunderstanding here ? 

But yet another, and once more a very dif- 
ferent form of individualism I find, at times, 
opposed by my objectors to the loyalty whose 
importance I am maintaining. The objection 
here in question is familiar. It may be stated 

f 65 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

thus: The modern man — yes, the modern 
woman also, as we sometimes are told — 
can be content only with the completest pos- 
sible self-development and the fullest self- 
expression which the conditions of our social 
life permit. We all of us have individual 
rights, so such an objector vigorously insists. 
Duties, perhaps, as he adds, we also occa- 
sionally have, under rather exceptional, per- 
haps abnormal and annoying, conditions. 
But whether or no the duties get in our way 
and hinder our growth, the rights at least 
are ours. Now, there is no good equal to win- 
ning what is your right ; namely, this free 
self-expression, this untrammelled play of the 
spirit. You have opinions ; utter them. They 
are opposed to current moral traditions ; then 
so much the better; for when you utter them 
you know, because of their unconventional 
sound, that they must be your own. Even so, 
your social ties prove irksome. Break them. 
Form new ones. Is not the free spirit eternally 
young? From this point of view loyalty does 
indeed appear to be slavish. Why sacrifice the 

66 



INDIVIDUALISM 



one thing that you have, — your chance to be 
yourself, and nobody else ? 

I need not further pursue, at the moment, the 
statement of the case for this special type of 
modern individualism. In this form indi- 
vidualism does not stand, like the enthusiasm 
of my young Russian, for sympathy with the 
oppressed, but rather for the exuberance of the 
vitality of certain people who, as I shall here- 
after try to show, have not yet found out what 
to do with themselves. In any case, individ- 
ualism of this sort, as I have said, is familiar 
enough. You know it well in recent literature. 
Plays, romances, essays, embody its teachings. 
You know this form of individualism also in 
real life. You read of its doings in the current 
newspapers. As you go about your own daily 
business, it sometimes, to show its moral dig- 
nity, jostles you more than even our modern 
congestion of population makes necessary; 
or it passes you by all too swiftly and 
perilously, in its triumphant and intrepid — 
self-assertion. In brief, the people who have 
more rights than duties have gained a notable 

67 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

and distinguished ethical position in our mod- 
ern world. The selfish we had always with 
us. But the divine right to be selfish was never 
more ingeniously defended, in the name of the 
loftiest spiritual dignity, than it is sometimes 
defended and illustrated to-day. 

But even now I have not done with stating 
the case of my objectors. Still another form 
of modern individualism exists, and this form 
is again very different from any of the fore- 
going forms. Yet once more I must let a 
friend of mine state the case for this sort of 
individualism. This is no longer the enthu- 
siastic revolt against the oppressor which my 
young Russian expressed ; nor is it the interest 
in moral independence of judgment which the 
teacher of youth emphasized; nor is it the 
type of self-assertion which prefers rights to 
duties ; it is, on the contrary, the individualism 
of those who seek, and who believe that they 
find, an interior spiritual light which guides 
them and which relieves them of the need of 
any loyalty to externally visible causes. Such 
people might themselves sometimes speak of 

68 



INDIVIDUALISM 



their fidelity to their inner vision as a sort of 
loyalty. But they would not define their 
loyalty in the terms which I have used in de- 
fining the loyal spirit. The friend of whom I 
have spoken stated the case for such people by 
saying: "Loyalty, such as you define, is not 
a man's chief good. Spirituality, contempla- 
tive self-possession, rest in the light of the truth, 
interior peace — these constitute, if one can 
attain to them, man's chief good. Good works 
for other men, and what externally appears as 
loyal conduct — such things may and will 
result from the attainment of inner perfection, 
but will so result merely because the good soul 
overflows, just as, to adapt the famous metaphor 
of Plotinus, just as the sun shines. The true 
good is to be at one with yourself within. Then 
you are at the centre of your world, and what- 
ever good deeds you ought to do will result from 
the mere fact that you are thus self-possessed, 
and are therefore also in possession of light and 
peace. It is, then, spirituality rather than loy- 
alty which we principally need." Thus, then, 
my friend's objection was stated. 

69 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

I have thus let four different kinds of indi* 
vidualism state their case, as against my own 
thesis that loyalty is man's chief moral good. 
Perhaps the foregoing objections are the prin- 
cipal ones which my thesis in the present day 
has to meet; although, as I said, a host of 
special objections can be made merely by 
varying the form of these. The objections, 
as you will have observed, are founded upon 
very various and mutually conflicting prin- 
ciples. Yet each one of them seems somewhat 
formidable, especially at this stage of my argu- 
ment, where I am maintaining, not that 
loyalty is good because or in so far as its cause 
is objectively and socially a good cause, but 
that loyalty is a centrally significant good for 
the loyal man himself, apart from the cause 
to which he is loyal, and so apart from the use- 
fulness to other people which his loyalty may 
possess. 

Ill 

The scholastic philosopher, Thomas Aqui- 
nas, in his famous theological treatise, the 
Summa, always, in each one of the articles 

70 



INDIVIDUALISM 



into which his work is divided, gives his 
opponents the word before he states his own 
case. And after thus setting forth in order 
the supposed reasons for the very views which 
he intends to combat, and immediately before 
beginning his detailed argument for the theses 
that he proposes to defend, he confronts his 
various opponents with some single counter- 
consideration, — a Scriptural passage, a word 
from the Fathers, or whatever brief assertion 
will serve his purpose, — as a sort of indica- 
tion to all of his opponents together that they 
somehow must be in the wrong. This brief 
opening of his confutation is always formally 
introduced by the set phrase : Sed contra est, 
"But on the contrary stands the fact that/' 
etc. 

And so now, having sketched various objec- 
tions, due to equally various forms of individ- 
ualism, I may venture my own Sed contra est 
before I go on to a better statement of my case. 
Against all my four opponents stands the fol- 
lowing fact : — 

A little while since the Japanese won much 

71 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

admiration from all of us by the absolute 
loyalty to their own national cause which they 
displayed during their late war. Hereupon 
we turned for information to our various au- 
thorities upon things Japanese, and came to 
know something of that old moral code Bushido 
which Nitobe in his little book has called the 
Soul of Japan. Well, whatever our other 
views regarding Japanese life and policy, I 
think that we have now come to see that the 
ideal of Bushido, the ancient Japanese type 
of loyalty, despite the barbarous life of feuds 
and of bloodshed in which it first was born, 
had very many elements of wonderful spiritual 
power about it. Now, Bushido did indeed in- 
volve many an ti -individualistic features. But 
it never meant to those who believed in it any 
sort of mere slavishness. The loyal Japanese 
Samurai, as he is described to us by those who 
know, never lacked his own sort of self-asser- 
tion. He never accepted what he took to be 
tyranny. He had his chiefs ; but as an indi- 
vidual, he was proud to serve them. He often 
used his own highly trained judgment regard- 

72 



INDIVIDUALISM 



ing the applications of the complex code of 
honor under which he was reared. He was 
fond of what he took to be his rights as a man 
of honor. He made much, even childlike, dis- 
play of his dignity. His costume, his sword, 
his bearing, displayed this sense of his im- 
portance. Yet his ideal at least, and in large 
part his practice, as his admirers depict him, 
involved a great deal of elaborate cultivation 
of a genuine spiritual serenity. His whole 
early training involved a repression of private 
emotions, a control over his moods, a deliberate 
cheer and peace of mind, all of which he con- 
ceived to be a necessary part of his knightly 
equipment. Chinese sages, as well as Buddh- 
istic traditions, influenced his views of the 
cultivation of this interior self-possession and 
serenity of soul. And yet he was also a man 
of the world, a warrior, an avenger of insults 
to his honor ; and above all, he was loyal. His 
loyalty, in fact, consisted of all these personal 
and social virtues together. 

This Japanese loyalty of the Samurai was 
trained by the ancient customs of Bushido to 

73 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

such freedom and plasticity of conception 
and expression that, when the modern reform 
came, the feudal loyalties were readily trans- 
formed, almost at a stroke, into that active 
devotion of the individual to the whole nation 
and to its modern needs and demands, — that 
devotion, I say, which made the rapid and 
wonderful transformation of Japan possible. 
The ideal of Bushido, meanwhile, spread 
from the old military class to a great part of 
the nation at large. It is plainly not the only 
Japanese ideal. And I am not disposed to 
exaggerate what I hear of the part that the 
old Japanese loyalty actually plays in deter- 
mining the present morality of the plain people 
of that country. But there can be no doubt 
that Bushido has been an enviable spiritual 
possession of vast numbers of Japanese. 
It is indeed universally agreed that this ideal 
of loyalty has been conceived in Japan as 
requiring a certain impersonalism, a certain 
disregard of the central importance of the 
ethical individual. And I myself do not be- 
lieve, in fact, that the Japanese have rightly 

74 



INDIVIDUALISM 



conceived the true worth of the individual. 
And yet, after all, is not this Japanese ideal of 
loyalty a sort of counter-instance which all 
the various opponents of loyalty, whose cases 
have heretofore been stated, ought to consider ? 

For Japanese loyalty has not been a mere 
tool for the oppressors to use. Herein it has 
indeed strongly differed from that blind and 
pathetic loyalty of the ignorant Russian peas- 
ant, which my young friend had in mind 
when he condemned loyalty. Japanese loy- 
alty has led, on the contrary, to a wonderful 
and cordial solidarity of national spirit. If 
it has discouraged strident self-assertion, it 
has not suppressed individual judgment. For 
the modern transformation of Japan has 
surely depended upon a vast development of 
personal ingenuity and plasticity, not only in- 
tellectual but moral. This loyalty has not 
made machines out of men. It has given 
rise to a wonderful development of individual 
talent. Japanese loyalty, furthermore, if in- 
deed strongly opposed to the individualism 
which knows its rights rather than its duties, 

75 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

has expressed itself in an heroic vigor of life 
which the most energetic amongst those who 
love to assert themselves might well envy. 
And meanwhile this loyalty, in some at least 
of its representatives, has included, has used, 
has elaborately trained an inner serenity of 
individual self-control, a spiritual peace and 
inner perfection which I find enviable, 
and which many of our own nervous wan- 
derers upon the higher plane might find 
indeed restful if they could attain to it. 
There is, then, not so much opposition be- 
tween the good which the loyal may win, 
and the various personal goods which our par- 
tisans of individualism emphasized. I do not 
believe that the Japanese ought to be our 
models. Our civilization has its own moral 
problems, and must meet them in its own way. 
But I am sure that our various partisans of 
ethical individualism, when they conceive that 
they are opponents of the spirit of loyalty, 
ought to consider those aspects of Japanese 
loyalty which most of us do indeed find en- 
viable. This counter-instance serves to show 

76 



INDIVIDUALISM 



that, at least in some measure, the various 
personal goods which the different ethical 
individualists seek, have been won, and so can 
be won, by means of the spirit of loyalty. 

IV 

With this counter-instance once before you, 
I may now go on to a closer analysis of the 
rational claims of ethical individualism. 

Whether he takes account of the physical 
or of the natural world, every man inevitably 
finds himself as apparently occupying the 
centre of his own universe. The starry 
heavens form to his eyes a sphere, and he him- 
self, so far as he can ever see, is at the centre 
of that sphere. Yes, the entire and infinite 
visible world, to be even more exact, seems to 
each of you to have its centre about where the 
bridge of your own nose chances to be. What 
is very remote from us we all of us find it diffi- 
cult to regard as real in the same warm and 
vital sense in which the world near to us is 
real. It is for us all a little hard to see how 

77 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



the people who live far from our own dwelling- 
place, say, the Australians or the Siberians, 
can really fail to observe how distant they are 
from the place where, after all, it is from our 
point of view most natural to have one's 
abiding-place. And the people of alien races 
must surely feel, if they share our so natural 
insight regarding them, that they are indeed 
a strange sort of folk. 

This inevitable illusion of perspective is, 
of course, responsible for what is called our 
natural selfishness. But on the other hand, 
this illusion is no mere illusion. It suggests, 
even while it distorts, the true nature of things. 
The real world has a genuine relation to the 
various personalities that live in it. The 
truth is diversified by its relation to these per- 
sonalities. Values do indeed alter with the 
point of view. The world as interpreted by 
me is a fact different from the world as inter- 
preted by you ; and these different interpreta- 
tions have all of them their basis in the truth 
of things. So far as moral values are con- 
cerned, it is therefore indeed certain that no 

78 



INDIVIDUALISM 



ethical doctrine can be right which neglects 
individuals, and which disregards, I will not 
say their right, but their duty to centralize 
their lives, and so their moral universe, about 
their own purposes. As we seem to be at the 
centre of the starry heavens, so each of us is 
indeed at the centre of his own realm of duty. 
No impersonal moral theory can be successful. 
Individualism in ethics has therefore its 
permanent and, as I believe, its absolute jus- 
tification in the nature of things. And the 
first principle of a true individualism in ethics 
is indeed that moral autonomy of any rational 
person which I mentioned at the last time, 
and which Kant so beautifully defended. 
Only your own will, brought to a true knowl- 
edge of itself, can ever determine for you what 
your duty is. And so far, then, I myself, in 
defending loyalty as a good thing for the loyal, 
am speaking as an ethical individualist. My 
whole case depends upon this fact. And so, 
in following my argument, you need not fear 
that I want to set some impersonal sort of life 
as an ideal over against the individualism of 

79 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



the opponents of loyalty whose various cases I 
have just been stating. I contend only that 
their opposition to loyalty, their view that one's 
individual purposes can be won otherwise than 
by and through loyalty, is due merely to their 
failure to comprehend what it is that the ethical 
individual needs, and what it is that in all, 
even of his blindest strivings, he is still seeking. 
What I hold is, that he inevitably seeks his 
own form of loyalty, his own cause, and his 
opportunity to serve that cause, and that he 
can actually and rationally find spiritual rest 
and peace in nothing else. Let me indicate to 
you my reasons for this view; and then, as 
I hope, you will see that my opponents do not 
at heart mean to oppose me. As the matter 
stands, they merely oppose themselves, and 
this through a mere misapprehension. 

To my opponent, wherever he is, I therefore 
say: Be an individual; seek your own indi- 
vidual good ; seek that good thoroughly, un- 
swervingly, unsparingly, with all your heart 
and soul. But I persist in asking : Where, in 
heaven above and in earth beneath, have you 

80 



INDIVIDUALISM 



to look for this your highest good? Where 
can you find it ? 

V 

The first answer to this question might very 
naturally take the form of saying: "I seek, 
as my highest individual good, my own happi- 
ness/' But, as I pointed out to you in my 
opening discussion, this answer only gives you 
your problem back again, unsolved. Happi- 
ness involves the satisfaction of desires. Your 
natural desires are countless and conflicting. 
What satisfies one desire defeats another. 
Until your desires are harmonized by means 
of some definite plan of life, happiness is 
therefore a mere accident. Now it comes and 
now it flies, you know not why. And the 
mere plan to be happy if you can is by itself 
no plan. You therefore cannot adopt the 
pursuit of happiness as your profession. The 
calling that you adopt will in any case be some- 
thing that the social order in which you live 
teaches you ; and all plans will in your mind be 
practically secondary to your general plan to 
a 81 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

live in some sort of tolerable relation to vour 
social order. For you are indeed a social 
being. 

If, next, you simply say : "Well, then, I will 
live as my social order requires me to live/' — 
again, as we have seen, you find yourself with- 
out any determinate way of expressing your 
own individuality. For if the social order is 
indeed not as chaotic in its activities as by 
nature you yourself are, it is quite unable of 
itself to do more than to make of you, in one 
way or another, a link in its mechanism, or 
a member of one of its numerous herds, in anv 
case a mere vehicle for carrying its various in- 
fluences. Against this fate, as an ethical indi- 
vidual, you justly revolt. If this chance social 
existence furnishes to you your only plan of 
life, you therefore live in a sad but altogether 
too common wavering between blind submis- 
sion and incoherent rebellion. As Kant says 
of the natural human being, your state so far 
remains this, that you can neither endure your 
fellow-man nor do without him. You do your 
daily work perhaps, but you complain of your 

82 



INDIVIDUALISM 



employer. You earn your bread, but you 
are bitter because of hard times, and because 
of the social oppressions that beset you. 
You are insufferably dreary when alone, 
but are bored when in company. Your 
neighbors determine your customs; but in 
return for the art of life thus acquired, you 
persistently criticise your neighbors for their 
offences against custom. Imitation and jeal- 
ousy, slavish conventionality, on the one hand, 
secret or open disorder, on the other, bicker- 
ings that inflame, and gayeties that do not 
cheer — these, along with many joys and sor- 
rows that come by accident, constitute upon 
this level the chronicle of your life. It is 
such a chronicle that the daily newspapers, 
in the most of their less violently criminal re- 
ports, constantly rehearse to us, so far as they 
are not taken up with reporting the really 
greater social activities of mankind. Thus the 
merely social animal escapes from the chaos 
of his natural desires, only to sink to the 
pettiness of a hewer of wood and drawer of 
water for his lord, the social order. He may 

83 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

become fairly happy for a longer or shorter 
time ; but that is so far mere chance. He may 
even think himself fairly contented, but that is, 
upon this level, mere callousness. 

But if, indeed, you are a genuine individual- 
ist, you cannot accept this fate. If you are an 
effective individualist, you do not remain a 
prey to that fate. You demand your libera- 
tion. You require your birthright of the social 
order which has brought your individuality into 
being. You seek the salvation of yourself 
from this intolerable bondage. Now, I have 
already counselled you to seek such liberty 
in the form of loyalty ; that is, of a willing and 
whole-souled devotion to a fascinating social 
cause. But perhaps this does not yet seem to 
you the solution. And therefore you may 
next turn to a very familiar form of individual- 
ism. You may say, "Well, then, my ideal shall 
be Power. I seek to be master of my fate." 

That the highest good for the individual is 
to be defined in terms of Power, — this, I say, 
is a well-known doctrine. It is very old. It is 
in each generation renewed, for the young men 

84 



INDIVIDUALISM 



define it ever afresh. In our time it has been 
emphasized by Nietzsche's view that the central 
principle of ethical individuality is Der Wille 
zur Macht — the will to be mighty. 

If this is now your doctrine, the power that 
you seek will, of course, not be mere brute 
force. Those have ill interpreted Nietzsche, 
— that heavily burdened invalid, doomed to 
solitude by his sensitiveness, and yet longing 
amidst his sufferings for an influence over his 
fellow-men of which he never became conscious 
before the end came to him, — those have ill 
interpreted him who have found in his passion- 
ate aphorisms only a glorification of elemental 
selfishness. No, — power for Nietzsche, as 
for all ethical individualists of serious signifi- 
cance, is power idealized through its social 
efficacy, and conceived in terms of some more 
or less vague dream of a completely perfected 
and ideal, but certainly social, individual man. 
And Nietzsche's particular dream of power 
has all the pathos of the hopeless invalid's 
longing for escape from his disease. The 
tragedy of his personal life was one only of the 

85 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



countless tragedies to which the seekers after 
power have fallen victims. 

Well, if it is power that you seek, your ideal 
may not be expressed as Nietzsche expressed 
his, but in any case you will be seeking some 
socially idealized type of power. Warriors, 
statesmen, artists, will be before your mind 
as examples of what power, if attained, would 
be. In your sphere you will be seeking to 
control social conditions, and to centre them 
about your individual interests. Our present 
question is : Can you hope to attain the highest 
individual good by such a quest for power as 
this ? 

When we remember that the principal theme 
of heroic tragedy in all ages has been the fate 
of the seekers after individual power, and that 
one of the favorite topics of comedy, from 
the beginning of comedy until to-day, has been 
the absurdity of the quest of these very lovers 
of power, our question begins to suggest its 
own answer. Regarding few topics have the 
sages, the poets, and the cynical critics of 
mankind more agreed than regarding the sig- 

86 



INDIVIDUALISM 



nificance of the search for power, whenever 
power is sought otherwise than as a mere means 
to some more ideal goal. Let us then merely 
recall the well-known verdict that tragedy and 
comedy, and the wisdom of the ages, have 
passed upon the lust of power. 

The objections to defining your individual 
good in terms merely of power are threefold. 
First, the attainment of power is a matter of 
fortune. Set your heart upon power, make it 
your central good in life, and you have staked 
the worth of your moral individuality upon a 
mere venture. In the end old age and death 
will at best make a mockery of whatever purely 
individual powers your life as a human being 
can possess for yourself alone. While life 
lasts, the attainment of power is at best but a 
little less uncertain than the attainment of a 
purely private individual happiness. This is 
the first objection to power as the highest indi- 
vidual good. It is an objection as sound as it 
is old ; and in this objection the poets and the 
sages are at one; and the cynics join in the 
verdict. 

87 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



Secondly, the lust for power is insatiable. 
To say, I seek merely power, not as a means to 
an end, but as my chief good, is to say that, for 
my own sake alone, I condemn myself to a 
laborious quest that is certain, from my own 
point of view and however fortune favors me, 
to give me a constantly increasing sense that I 
have not found what I need. Thus, then, I 
condemn myself to an endless disappointment. 
This objection is also well known; and it is 
easily illustrated. After fortune had long 
seemed to be actually unable to thwart Na- 
poleon, he went on to destroy himself, merely 
because his lust for power grew with what it 
fed upon, until the fatal Russian campaign 
became inevitable. 

Thirdly, in the often quoted words of Spi- 
noza, "The power of man is infinitely surpassed 
by the power of external things;" and hence 
the seeker after merely individual power has 
undertaken a battle with the essentially irre- 
sistible forces of the whole universe. There- 
fore, to adapt other words of Soinoza, when 
such a seeker after power "ceases to suffer, he 

88 



INDIVIDUALISM 



ceases also to be." The larger one's powers, 
the more are the places in which he comes in 
contact with the world that he would con- 
quer, and the more are the ways in which he 
feels its force. It is with the seeker after indi- 
vidual power as it has lately been with some of 
our greater corporations. The vaster the capi- 
tal of these corporations, and the more widely 
spread the interests that they control, the 
more numerous are their enemies, the harder 
the legislative enactments that they have to 
fear, the greater their fines if they are convicted 
of misdoing. Power means increasing oppor- 
tunities for conflict. Hence the mere seeker 
for power not only, by the accidents of fortune, 
may meet his downfall, but also, himself, 
actively pursues his own destruction. 

Whoever pursues power, and only power, 
wars therefore with unconquerable fate. But 
you may retort: "Are the loyal also not sub- 
ject to fortune, like others?" And, in reply, 
I call at once attention to the fact that pre- 
cisely such fate is what the loyal also unhesi- 
tatingly face; but they meet it in a totally 

89 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

different spirit. They, too, are indeed subject 
to fortune ; their loyalty, also, is an insatiable 
passion to serve their cause; they also know 
what it is to meet with tasks that are too vast 
for mortals to accomplish. Only their very 
loyalty, since it is a willing surrender of the self 
to the cause, is no hopeless warfare with this 
fate, but is a joyous acceptance in advance of the 
inevitable destiny of every individual human 
being. In such matters, as you well know, 
■'the readiness is all." Loyalty discounts 
death, for it is from the start a readiness to die 
for the cause. It defies fortune ; for it says : 
"Lo, have I not surrendered my all? Did I 
ever assert that just I must be fortunate?" 
Since it views life as service of the cause, it is 
content with an endless quest. Since nothing 
is too vast to undertake for the cause, loyalty 
regards the greatness of its tasks as mere 
opportunity. But the lust of power, on the 
contrary, has staked its value not upon the 
giving up of self-will, but upon the attainment 
of private possessions, upon the winning of 
the hopeless fight of the individual with his 

90 



INDIVIDUALISM 



private fate. Hence, in a world of wandering 
and of private disasters and unsettlement, the 
loyal indeed are always at home. For how- 
ever they may wander or lose, they view their 
cause as fixed and as worthy. To serve the 
cause is an honor; and this honor they have 
in their own possession. But in this same world 
the seekers for power are never at home. If 
they have conquered Western Europe, power 
lies still hidden in the Far East, and they wan- 
der into the snows of a Russian winter in pur- 
suit of that ghost of real life which always 
beckons to them from the dark world beyond. 
Napoleon's loyal soldiers won, indeed, their 
goal when they died in his service. But he 
lost. They were more fortunate than was 
their leader. They had their will, and then 
slept. He lived on for a while, and failed. 

Such considerations may suffice to show 
wherein consists the blindness of those who in 
our day seem to themselves to have more rights 
than duties. This homily of mine about the 
vanity of the lust for power is, of course, a very 
old story. You may think these remarks 

91 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



but wearisome moral platitudes. But we all 
have to learn this sort of lesson sometime 
afresh, and for ourselves. And if the story of 
the fate of the lust for power is old, it is none 
the less true. And it is a story that we in 
America seem to need to have told to us anew 
to-day. Any financial crisis with its tragedies 
can serve by way of illustration. 

But perhaps this is not the form of indi- 
vidualism which is asserted by the ethical 
individualist whom I am now addressing. 
Perhaps you say : "It is not mere power that I 
want. I demand moral autonomy, personal 
independence of judgment. I want to call 
my soul my own. The highest good is an 
active self -possession." Well, in this case I 
wholly agree with your demand, precisely in 
so far as you make that demand positive. I 
only undertake to supplement your own state- 
ment of your demand, and to oppose your 
denial of the supreme value of loyalty. For 
what end, I insist, is your moral independence 
good ? Do you find anything finally impor- 
tant in the mere fact that you are unlike any- 

92 



INDIVIDUALISM 



body else, or that you think good what another 
man condemns ? What worth could you find 
in an independence that should merely isolate 
you, that should leave you but a queer creature, 
whose views are shared by nobody? No, — 
you are still a social being. What you really 
mean is, that you want to be heard and re- 
spected as regards your choice of your own 
cause. What you actually intend is, that no- 
body else shall determine, apart from this your 
own choice, the special loyalty that shall be 
yours. 

Now, I, who have defined loyalty as the will- 
ing devotion of a self to a cause, am far from 
demanding from you any unwilling devotion 
to any cause. You are autonomous, of course. 
You can even cut loose from all loyalty if you 
will. I only plead that, if you do so, if you 
wholly decline to devote yourself to any cause 
whatever, your assertion of moral indepen- 
dence will remain but an empty proclaiming of 
a moral sovereignty over your life, without 
any definite life over which to be sovereign. 
For the only definite life that you can live will 

93 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

be a social life. This social life may indeed 
be one of enmity to society. But in that case 
your social order will crush you, and then your 
moral independence will die without any of the 
comfort of the loyal man's last glimpse of 
the banner for which he sheds his blood. For 
the loyal man's cause survives him. Your 
independence will die with you, and while it 
lives, nobody else will find its life worth insur- 
ing. Your last word will then be simply the 
empty phrase: "Lo, I asserted myself. " But 
in the supposed case of your enmity to society, 
you will never know what it was that you thus 
asserted when you asserted yourself. For a 
man's self has no contents, no plans, no pur- 
poses, except those which are, in one way or 
another, defined for him by his social relations. 
Or, again, your life may indeed be one of social 
conformity, of merely conventional morality. 
But such a life you, as individualist, have 
learned to despise, — I think justly. Your 
only recourse, then, is to assert your autonomy 
by choosing a cause, and by loyally living, and, 
when need be, dying for that cause. Then you 

94 



INDIVIDUALISM 



will not only assert yourself by your choice of 
a cause, but express yourself articulately by 
your service. The only way to be practically 
autonomous is to be freely loyal. 

Such considerations serve to indicate my 
answer to those individualists who insist upon 
moral independence. My young Russian and 
my friend, the teacher, were individualists of 
this type. My answer to them both, as you see, 
is that the only coherent moral independence 
which you can define is one that has to find its 
expression in a loyal life. There is endless 
room, as we shall hereafter see, for a rational 
autonomy in your choice of your cause. 

But you may still insist that one other form 
of individualism remains open to you. You 
may say: "I seek spirituality, serenity, an 
inward peace, which the world cannot give or 
take away. Therefore my highest good lies 
not in loyalty, but in this interior perfection.' ' 
But once more I answer you with the whole 
verdict of human experience regarding the 
true nature of spiritual self-possession. You 
seek serenity. Yes, but you do not want your 

95 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

serenity to mean mere apathy. You seek 
peace, but you do not want dreamless sleep, 
nor yet the repose of a swoon. The stones 
seem to remain serene when you by chance 
stumble over them; some tropical islanders 
slumber peacefully in their huts when there is 
no work pressing. But the types of serenity 
that are for you in question are not of such 
sort. You are an ethical individualist. Your 
repose must therefore be the only repose pos- 
sible to a being with a conscious and a vital 
will of his own. It must be the repose of ac- 
tivity; the assurance of one who lives ener- 
getically, even because he lives in the spirit. 
But in what spirit shall you live? Are you 
not a man ? Can you live with an active will 
of your own without living amongst your 
brethren ? Seek, then, serenity, but let it be 
the serenity of the devotedly and socially active 
being. Otherwise your spiritual peace is a 
mere feeling of repose, and, as such, contents 
at its best but one side of your nature, namely, 
the merely sensuous side. The massive sen- 
sation that all things are somehow well is not 

96 



INDIVIDUALISM 



the highest good of an active being. Even one 
of the most typical of mystics, Meister Eckhart, 
once stated his case, regarding a true spiritual 
life, thus : " That a man should have a life of 
rest and peace in God is good ; that he should 
bear a painful life with patience is better ; 
but that he should find his rest even in his pain- 
ful life, that is best of all." Now, this last 
state, the finding of one's rest and spiritual 
fulfilment even in one's very life of toil itself, — ■ 
this state is precisely the state of the loyal, 
in so far as their loyalty gets full control of 
their emotional nature. I grant you that not 
all the loyal are possessed of this serenity; 
but that is because of their defects of nature 
or of training. Their loyalty would be more 
effective, indeed, if it were colored throughout 
by the serenity that you pursue. But your own 
peace of spirit will be meaningless unless it is 
the peace of one who is willingly devoted to his 
cause. "The loving," says Bayard Taylor, in 
his lyric of Sebastopol, "the loving are the dar- 
ing." And I say: The truly serene of spirit 
are to be found at their best amongst the loyal. 
h 97 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

In view of such considerations, when I listen 
to our modern ethical individualists, — to our 
poets, dramatists, essayists who glorify per- 
sonal initiative — to our Walt Whitman, to 
Ibsen, and, above all, when I listen to Nietzsche, 
— I confess that these men move me for a time, 
but that erelong I begin to listen with impa- 
tience. Of course, I then say, be indeed auton- 
omous. Be an individual. But for Heaven's 
sake, set about the task. Do not forever whet 
the sword of your resolve. Begin the battle 
of real individuality. Why these endless pre- 
liminary gesticulations? "Leave off thy — ■ 
grimaces," and begin. There is only one way 
to be an ethical individual. That is to choose 
your cause, and then to serve it, as the Samurai 
his feudal chief, as the ideal knight of romantic 
story his lady, — in the spirit of all the loyal. 



98 



Ill 

LOYALTY TO LOYALTY 



LECTURE III 



LOYALTY TO LOYALTY 

THE two foregoing lectures have been de- 
voted to defending the thesis that loyalty 
is, for the loyal individual himself, a supreme 
good, whatever be, for the world in general, 
the worth of his cause. We are next to con- 
sider what are the causes which are worthy of 
loyalty. 

I 

But before I go on to this new stage of our 
discussion, I want, by way of summary of all 
that has preceded, to get before your minds as 
clear an image as I can of some representative 
instance of loyalty. The personal dignity and 
worth of a loyal character can best be appre- 
ciated by means of illustrations. And I con- 
fess that those illustrations of loyalty which my 
earlier lectures used must have aroused some 
associations which I do not want, as I go on to 

101 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



my further argument, to leave too prominent 
in your minds. I chose those instances be- 
cause they were familiar. Perhaps they are 
too familiar. I have mentioned the patriot 
aflame with the war-spirit, the knight of ro- 
mance, and the Japanese Samurai. But these 
examples may have too much emphasized the 
common but false impression that loyalty 
necessarily has to do with the martial virtues 
and with the martial vices. I have also used 
the instance of the loyal captain standing by 
his sinking ship. But this case suggests that 
the loyal have their duties assigned to them by 
some established and customary routine of the 
service to which they belong. And that, again, 
is an association that I do not want you to 
make too prominent. Loyalty is perfectly 
consistent with originality. The loyal man 
may often have to show his loyalty by some act 
which no mere routine predetermines. He may 
have to be as inventive of his duties as he is 
faithful to them. 

Now, I myself have for years used in my own 
classes, as an illustration of the personal worth 

102 



LOYALTY TO LOYALTY 



and beauty of loyalty, an incident of English 
history, which has often been cited as a 
precedent in discussions of the constitutional 
privileges of the House of Commons, but which, 
as I think, has not been sufficiently noticed by 
moralists. Let me set that incident now be- 
fore your imagination. Thus, I say, do the 
loyal bear themselves: In January, 1642, just 
before the outbreak of hostilities between 
King Charles I and the Commons, the King 
resolved to arrest certain leaders of the oppo- 
sition party in Parliament. He accordingly 
sent his herald to the House to demand the 
surrender of these members into his custody. 
The Speaker of the House in reply solemnly 
appealed to the ancient privileges of the House, 
which gave to that body jurisdiction over its 
own members, and which forbade their arrest 
without its consent. The conflict between the 
privileges of the House and the royal preroga- 
tive was herewith definitely initiated. The 
King resolved by a show of force to assert at 
once his authority ; and, on the day following 
that upon which the demand sent through his 

103 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



herald had been refused, he went in person, 
accompanied by soldiers, to the House. Then, 
having placed his guards at the doors, he en- 
tered, went up to the Speaker, and, naming the 
members whom he desired to arrest, demanded, 
"Mr. Speaker, do you espy these persons in 
the House?" 

You will observe that the moment was an 
unique one in English history. Custom, prece- 
dent, convention, obviously were inadequate 
to define the Speaker's duty in this most criti- 
cal instance. How, then, could he most ad- 
mirably express himself? How best preserve 
his genuine personal dignity ? What response 
would secure to the Speaker his own highest 
good ? Think of the matter merely as one of 
the Speaker's individual worth and reputation. 
By what act could he do himself most honor ? 

In fact, as the well-known report, entered 
in the Journal of the House, states, the Speaker 
at once fell on his knee before the King and 
said: "Your Majesty, I am the Speaker of 
this House, and, being such, I have neither 
eyes to see nor tongue to speak save as this 

104 



LOYALTY TO LOYALTY 

House shall command; and I humbly beg 
your Majesty's pardon if this is the only an- 
swer that I can give to your Majesty." 

Now, I ask you not, at this point, to consider 
the Speaker's reply to the King as a deed 
having historical importance, or in fact as 
having value for anybody but himself. I want 
you to view the act merely as an instance of 
a supremely worthy personal attitude. The 
beautiful union of formal humility (when the 
Speaker fell on his knee before the King) 
with unconquerable self-assertion (when the 
reply rang with so clear a note of lawful de- 
fiance) ; the willing and complete identifica- 
tion of his whole self with his cause (when the 
Speaker declared that he had no eye or tongue 
except as his office gave them to him), — these 
are characteristics typical of a loyal attitude. 
The Speaker's words were at once ingenious 
and obvious. They were in line with the an- 
cient custom of the realm. They were also 
creative of a new precedent. He had to be 
inventive to utter them ; but once uttered, they 
seem almost commonplace in their plain truth. 

105 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



The King might be offended at the refusal; 
but he could not fail to note that, for the mo- 
ment, he had met with a personal dignity 
greater than kingship, — the dignity that any 
loyal man, great or humble, possesses whenever 
he speaks and acts in the service of his cause. 

Well — here is an image of loyalty. Thus, 
I say, whatever their cause, the loyal express 
themselves. When any one asks me what the 
worthiest personal bearing, the most dignified 
and internally complete expression of an indi- 
vidual is, I can therefore only reply: Such a 
bearing, such an expression of yourself as the 
Speaker adopted. Have, then, your cause, 
chosen by you just as the Speaker had chosen 
to accept his office from the House. Let this 
cause so possess you that, even in the most 
thrilling crisis of your practical service of that 
cause, you can say with the Speaker: "I am 
the servant of this cause, its reasonable, its 
willing, its devoted instrument, and, being 
such, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to 
speak save as this cause shall command" 
Let this be your bearing, and this your deed. 

106 



LOYALTY TO LOYALTY 



Then, indeed, you know what you live for. 
And you have won the attitude which consti- 
tutes genuine personal dignity. What an indi- 
vidual in his practical bearing can be, you 
now are. And herein, as I have said, lies for 
you a supreme personal good. 

II 

With this image of the loyal self before us, 
let us now return to the main thread of our 
discourse. We have deliberately declined, so 
far, to consider what the causes are to which 
men ought to be loyal. To turn to this task is 
the next step in our philosophy of loyalty. 

Your first impression may well be that the 
task in question is endlessly complex. In our 
opening lecture we defined indeed some gen- 
eral characteristics which a cause must possess 
in order to be a fitting object of loyalty. A 
cause, we said, is a possible object of loyalty 
only in case it is such as to join many persons 
into the unity of a single life. Such a cause, we 
said, must therefore be at once personal, and, 
for one who defines personality from a purely 

107 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

human point of view, superpersonal. Our ini* 
tial illustrations of possible causes were, first, 
a friendship which unites several friends into 
some unity of friendly life ; secondly, a family, 
whose unity binds its members' lives together ; 
and, thirdly, the state, in so far as it is no mere 
collection of separate citizens, but such an unity 
as that to which the devoted patriot is loyal. 
As we saw, such illustrations could be vastly 
extended. All stable social relations may give 
rise to causes that may call forth loyalty. 

Now, it is obvious that nobody can be equally 
and directly loyal to all of the countless actual 
social causes that exist. It is obvious also 
that many causes which conform to our general 
definition of a possible cause may appear to any 
given person to be hateful and evil causes, to 
which he is justly opposed. A robber band, 
a family engaged in a murderous feud, a pirate 
crew, a savage tribe, a Highland robber clan 
of the old days — these might constitute 
causes to which somebody has been, or is, pro- 
foundly loyal. Men have loved such causes 
devotedly, have served them for a lifetime. 

108 



LOYALTY TO LOYALTY 



Yet most of us would easily agree in thinking 
such causes unworthy of anybody's loyalty. 
Moreover, different loyalties may obviously 
stand in mutual conflict, whenever their causes 
are opposed. Family feuds are embittered by 
the very strength of the loyalty of both sides. 
My country, if I am the patriot inflamed by the 
war-spirit, seems an absolutely worthy cause; 
but my enemy's country usually seems hateful 
to me just because of my own loyalty; and 
therefore even my individual enemy may be 
hated because of the supposed baseness of his 
cause. War-songs call the individual enemy 
evil names just because he possesses the very 
personal qualities that, in our own loyal fellow- 
countrymen, we most admire. "No refuge 
could save the hireling and slave." Our 
enemy, as you see, is a slave, because he serves 
his cause so obediently. Yet just such service 
we call, in our own country's heroes, the wor- 
thiest devotion. 

Meanwhile, in the foregoing account of 
loyalty as a spiritual good to the loyal man, we 
have insisted that true loyalty, being a willing 

109 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



devotion of the self to its cause, involves some 
element of autonomous choice. Tradition 
has usually held that a man ought to be loyal 
to just that cause which his social station deter- 
mines for him. Common sense generally says, 
that if you were born in your country, and still 
live there, you ought to be loyal to that country, 
and to that country only, hating the enemies 
across the border whenever a declaration of 
war requires you to hate them. But we have 
declared that true loyalty includes some ele- 
ment of free choice. Hence our own account 
seems still further to have complicated the 
theory of loyalty. For in answering in our 
last lecture the ethical individualists who ob- 
jected to loyalty, we have ourselves deliberately 
given to loyalty an individualistic coloring. 
And if our view be right, and if tradition be 
wrong, so much the more difficult appears to 
be the task of defining wherein consists that 
which makes a cause worthy of loyalty for a 
given man, since tradition alone is for us an 
insufficient guide. 

To sum up, then, our apparent difficulties* 

no 



LOYALTY TO LOYALTY 

they are these : Loyalty is a good for the loyal 
man; but it may be mischievous for those 
whom his cause assails. Conflicting loyalties 
may mean general social disturbances; and 
the fact that loyalty is good for the loyal does 
not of itself decide whose cause is right when 
various causes stand opposed to one another. 
And if, in accordance with our own argument 
in the foregoing lecture, we declare that the 
best form of loyalty, for the loyal individual, 
is the one that he freely chooses for himself, 
so much the greater seems to be the complica- 
tion of the moral world, and so much the more 
numerous become the chances that the loyal- 
ties of various people will conflict with one 
another. 

Ill 

In order to overcome such difficulties, now 
that they have arisen in our way, and in order 
to discover a principle whereby one may be 
guided in choosing a right object for his loyalty, 
we must steadfastly bear in mind that, when 
we declared loyalty to be a supreme good for 

ill 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

the loyal man himself, we were not speaking 
of a good that can come to a few men only — - 
to heroes or to saints of an especially exalted 
mental type. As we expressly said, the 
mightiest and the humblest members of any 
social order can be morally equal in the ex- 
emplification of loyalty. Whenever I myself 
begin to look about my own community to 
single out those people whom I know to be, 
in the sense of our definition, especially loyal 
to their various causes, I always find, amongst 
the most exemplary cases of loyalty, a few in- 
deed of the most prominent members of the 
community, whom your minds and mine must 
at once single out because their public services 
and their willing sacrifices have made their 
loyalty to their chosen causes a matter of com- 
mon report and of easy observation. But 
my own mind also chooses some of the plain- 
est and obscurest of the people whom I chance 
to know, the most straightforward and simple- 
minded of folk, whose loyalty is even all the 
more sure to me because I can certainly 
affirm that they, at least, cannot be making 

112 



LOYALTY TO LOYALTY 



any mere display of loyalty in order that they 
should be seen of men. Nobody knows of 
their loyalty except those who are in more or 
less direct touch with them ; and these usually 
appreciate this loyalty too little. You all of 
you similarly know plain and wholly obscure 
men and women, of whom the world has never 
heard, and is not worthy, but who have pos- 
sessed and who have proved in the presence of 
you who have chanced to observe them, a loyalty 
to their chosen causes which was not indeed 
expressed in martial deeds, but which was quite 
as genuine a loyalty as that of a Samurai, or 
as that of Arnold von Winkelried when he 
rushed upon the Austrian spears. As for the 
ordinary expressions of loyalty, not at critical 
moments and in the heroic instants that come 
to the plainest lives, but in daily business, we 
are all aware how the letter carrier and the 
housemaid may live, and often do live, when 
they choose, as complete a daily life of steadfast 
loyalty as could any knight or king. Some of 
us certainly know precisely such truly great 
personal embodiments of loyalty in those who 

I 113 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



are, in the world's ill-judging eyes, the little 
ones of the community. 

Now these facts, I insist, show that loyalty 
is in any case no aristocratic gift of the few. 
It is, indeed, too rare a possession to-day in 
our own American social order; but that 
defect is due to the state of our present moral 
education. We as a nation, I fear, have been 
forgetting loyalty. We have been neglecting to 
cultivate it in our social order. We have been 
making light of it. We have not been train- 
ing ourselves for it. Hence we, indeed, often 
sadly miss it in our social environment. But 
all sound human beings are made for it and 
can learn to possess it and to profit by it. 
And it is an essentially accessible and prac- 
tical virtue for everybody. 

This being true, let us next note that all the 
complications which we just reported are ob- 
viously due, in the main, to the fact that, as 
loyal men at present are, their various causes, 
and so their various loyalties, are viewed by 
them as standing in mutual, sometimes in 
deadly conflict. In general, as is plain if 

114 



LOYALTY TO LOYALTY 



somebody's loyalty to a given cause, as for 
instance to a family, or to a state, so expresses 
itself as to involve a feud with a neighbor's 
family, or a warlike assault upon a foreign 
state, the result is obviously an evil; and at 
least part of the reason why it is an evil is 
that, by reason of the feud or the war, a cer- 
tain good, namely, the enemy's loyalty, to- 
gether with the enemy's opportunity to be 
loyal, is assailed, is thwarted, is endangered, 
is, perhaps, altogether destroyed. If the loy- 
alty of A is a good for him, and if the loyalty 
of B is a good for him, then a feud between 
A and B, founded upon a mutual conflict 
between the causes that they serve, obviously 
involves this evil, namely, that each of the 
combatants assails, and perhaps may alto- 
gether destroy, precisely what we have seen 
to be the best spiritual possession of the 
other, namely, his chance to have a cause 
and to be loyal to a cause. The militant 
loyalty, indeed, also assails, in such a case, 
the enemy's physical comfort and well-being, 
his property, his life; and herein, of course, 

115 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



militant loyalty does evil to the enemy. But 
if each man's having and serving a cause is 
his best good, the worst of the evils of a feud 
is the resulting attack, not upon the enemy's 
comfort or his health or his property or his 
life, but upon the most precious of his posses- 
sions, his loyalty itself. 

If loyalty is a supreme good, the mutually 
destructive conflict of loyalties is in general a 
supreme evil. If loyalty is a good for all 
sorts and conditions of men, the war of man 
against man has been especially mischievous, 
not so much because it has hurt, maimed, im- 
poverished, or slain men, as because it has 
so often robbed the defeated of their causes, 
of their opportunities to be loyal, and some- 
times of their very spirit of loyalty. 

If, then, we look over the field of human 
life to see where good and evil have most 
clustered, we see that the best in human life 
is its loyalty ; while the worst is whatever has 
tended to make loyalty impossible, or to 
destroy it when present, or to rob it of its own 
while it still survives. And of all things that 

116 



LOYALTY TO LOYALTY 



thus have warred with loyalty, the bitterest 
woe of humanity has been that so often it is 
the loyal themselves who have thus blindly 
and eagerly gone about to wound and to slay 
the loyalty of their brethren. The spirit of 
loyalty has been misused to make men commit 
sin against this very spirit, holy as it is. For 
such a sin is precisely what any wanton con- 
flict of loyalties means. Where such a con- 
flict occurs, the best, namely, loyalty, is 
used as an instrument in order to compass the 
worst, namely, the destruction of loyalty. 

It is true, then, that some causes are good, 
while some are evil. But the test of good and 
evil in the causes to which men are loyal is 
now definable in terms which we can greatly 
simplify in view of the foregoing considera- 
tions. 

If, namely, I find a cause, and this cause 
fascinates me, and I give myself over to its 
service, I in so far attain what, for me, if my 
loyalty is complete, is a supreme good. But 
my cause, by our own definition, is a social 
cause, which binds many into the unity of 

117 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



one service. My cause, therefore, gives me^ 
of necessity, fellow-servants, who with me 
share this loyalty, and to whom this loyalty, if 
complete, is also a supreme good. So far, 
then, in being loyal myself, I not only get but 
give good; for I help to sustain, in each of 
my fellow-servants, his own loyalty, and so I 
help him to secure his own supreme good. 
In so far, then, my loyalty to my cause is also 
a loyalty to my fellows' loyalty. But now 
suppose that my cause, like the family in a 
feud, or like the pirate ship, or like the aggres- 
sively warlike nation, lives by the destruction 
of the loyalty of other families, or of its own 
community, or of other communities. Then, 
indeed, I get a good for myself and for my 
fellow-servants by our common loyalty; but 
I war against this very spirit of loyalty as it 
appears in our opponent's loyalty to his own 
cause. 

And so, a cause is good, not only for me, 
but for mankind, in so far as it is essentially 
a loyalty to loyalty, that is, is an aid and a 
furtherance of loyalty in my fellows. It is an 

118 



LOYALTY TO LOYALTY 



evil cause in so far as, despite the loyalty 
that it arouses in me, it is destructive of loy- 
alty in the world of my fellows. My cause 
is, indeed, always such as to involve some 
loyalty to loyalty, because, if I am loyal to 
any cause at all, I have fellow-servants whose 
loyalty mine supports. But in so far as my 
cause is a predatory cause, which lives by 
overthrowing the loyalties of others, it is an 
evil cause, because it involves disloyalty to 
the very cause of loyalty itself. 

IV 

In view of these considerations, we are 
now able still further to simplify our problem 
by laying stress upon one more of those very 
features which seemed, but a moment since, to 
complicate the matter so hopelessly. Loy- 
alty, as w r e have defined it, is the willing de- 
votion of a self to a cause. In answering the 
ethical individualists, we have insisted that 
all of the higher types of loyalty involve auton- 
omous choice. The cause that is to appeal 
to me at all must indeed have some elemental 

119 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



fascination for me. It must stir me, arouse 
me, please me, and in the end possess me. 
Moreover, it must, indeed, be set before me 
by my social order as a possible, a practically 
significant, a living cause, which binds many 
selves in the unity of one life. But, never- 
theless, if I am really awake to the signifi- 
cance of my own moral choices, I must be in 
the position of accepting this cause, as the 
Speaker of the House, in the incident that I 
have narrated, had freely accepted his Speak- 
ership. My cause cannot be merely forced 
upon me. It is I who make it my own. It is 
I who willingly say: "I have no eyes to see 
nor tongue to speak save as this cause shall 
command." However much the cause may 
seem to be assigned to me by my social sta- 
tion, I must cooperate in the choice of the 
cause, before the act of loyalty is complete. 

Since this is the case, since my loyalty never 
is my mere fate, but is always also my choice, 
I can of course determine my loyalty, at least 
to some extent, by the consideration of the 
actual good and ill which my proposed cause 

120 



LOYALTY TO LOYALTY 



does to mankind. And since I now have the 
main criterion of the good and ill of causes 
before me, I can define a principle of choice 
which may so guide me that my loyalty shall 
become a good, not merely to myself, but to 
mankind. 

This principle is now obvious. I may 
state it thus : In so far as it lies in your power, 
so choose your cause and so serve it, that, by 
reason of your choice and of your service, 
there shall be more loyalty in the world rather 
than less. And, in fact, so choose and 
so serve your individual cause as to secure 
thereby the greatest possible increase of loy- 
alty amongst men. More briefly: In choos- 
ing and in serving the cause to which you are 
to be loyal, be, in any case, loyal to loyalty. 

This precept, I say, will express how one 
should guide his choice of a cause, in so far as 
he considers not merely his own supreme 
good, but that of mankind. That such auton- 
omous choice is possible, tends, as we now 
see, not to complicate, but to simplify our moral 
situation. For if you regard men's loyalty 

121 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

as their fate, if you think that a man must be 
loyal simply to the cause which tradition sets 
before him, without any power to direct his 
own moral attention, then indeed the conflict 
of loyalties seems an insoluble problem; so 
that, if men find themselves loyally involved 
in feuds, there is no way out. But if, indeed, 
choice plays a part, — a genuine even if 
limited part, in directing the individual's 
choice of the cause to which he is to be loyal, 
then indeed this choice may be so directed 
that loyalty to the universal loyalty of all 
mankind shall be furthered by the actual 
choices which each enlightened loyal person 
makes when he selects his cause. 

V 

At the close of our first discussion we sup- 
posed the question to be asked, Where, in all 
our complex and distracted modern world, in 
which at present cause wars with cause, shall 
we find a cause that is certainly worthy of 
our loyalty? This question, at this very 
moment, has received in our discussion an 

122 



LOYALTY TO LOYALTY 



answer which you may feel to be so far pro* 
visional, — perhaps unpractical, — but which 
you ought to regard as, at least in principle, 
somewhat simple and true to human nature. 
Loyalty is a good, a supreme good. If I my- 
self could but find a worthy cause, and serve it 
as the Speaker served the House, having nei- 
ther eyes to see nor tongue to speak save as 
that cause should command, then my highest 
human good, in so far as I am indeed an active 
being, would be mine. But this very good of 
loyalty is no peculiar privilege of mine; nor 
is it good only for me. It is an universally 
human good. For it is simply the finding of 
a harmony of the self and the world, — such 
a harmony as alone can content any human 
being. 

In these lectures I do not found my ar- 
gument upon some remote ideal. I found 
my case upon taking our poor passionate 
human nature just as we find it. This "eager 
anxious being" of ours, as Gray calls it, is 
a being that we can find only in social ties, 
and that we, nevertheless, can never fulfil 

123 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

without a vigorous self-assertion. We are bj 
nature proud, untamed, restless, insatiable in 
our private self-will . We are also imitative, 
plastic, and in bitter need of ties. We pro- 
foundly want both to rule and to be ruled. 
We must be each of us at the centre of his 
own active world, and yet each of us longs 
to be in harmony with the very outermost 
heavens that encompass, with the lofty order- 
liness of their movements, all our restless 
doings. The stars fascinate us, and yet we 
also want to keep our own feet upon our solid 
human earth. Our fellows, meanwhile, over- 
whelm us with the might of their customs, 
and we in turn are inflamed with the natu- 
rally unquenchable longing that they should 
somehow listen to the cries of our every in- 
dividual desire. 

Now this divided being of ours demands 
reconciliation with itself ; it is one long strug- 
gle for unity. Its inner and outer realms are 
naturally at war. Yet it wills both realms. 
It wants them to become one. Such unity, 
however, only loyalty furnishes to us, — loy- 

124 



LOYALTY TO LOYALTY 

alty, which finds the inner self intensified and 
exalted even by the very act of outward look- 
ing and of upward looking, of service and 
obedience, — loyalty, which knows its eyes and 
its tongue to be never so much and so proudly 
its own as when it earnestly insists that it can 
neither see nor speak except as the cause de- 
mands, — loyalty, which is most full of life at the 
instant when it is most ready to become weary, 
or even to perish in the act of devotion to its 
own. Such loyalty unites private passion and 
outward conformity in one life. This is the 
very essence of loyalty. Now loyalty has these 
characters in any man who is loyal. Its 
emotions vary, indeed, endlessly with the 
temperaments of its adherents; but to them 
all it brings the active peace of that rest in a 
painful life, — that rest such as we found the 
mystic, Meister Eckhart, fully ready to prize. 

Loyalty, then, is a good for all men. And 
it is in any man just as much a true good as 
my loyalty could be in me. And so, then, if 
indeed I seek a cause, a worthy cause, 
what cause could be more worthy than the 

125 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



cause of loyalty to loyalty; that is, the 
cause of making loyalty prosper amongst 
men? If I could serve that cause in a sus- 
tained and effective life, if some practical 
work for the furtherance of universal human 
loyalty could become to me what the House 
was to the Speaker, then indeed my own life- 
task would be found; and I could then be 
assured at every instant of the worth of my 
cause by virtue of the very good that I per- 
sonally found in its service. 

Here would be for me not only an unity of 
inner and outer, but an unity with the unity of 
all human life. What I sought for myself I 
should then be explicitly seeking for my whole 
world. All men would be my fellow-servants 
of my cause. In principle I should be opposed 
to no man's loyalty. I should be opposed only 
to men's blindness in their loyalty, I should 
contend only against that tragic disloyalty to 
loyalty which the feuds of humanity now 
exemplify. I should preach to all others, I 
should strive to practise myself, that active 
mutual furtherance of universal loyalty which 

126 



LOYALTY TO LOYALTY 



is what humanity obviously most needs, if 
indeed loyalty, just as the willing devotion of 
a self to a cause, is a supreme good. 

And since all who are human are as capable 
of loyalty as they are of reason, since the 
plainest and the humblest can be as true- 
hearted as the great, I should nowhere miss 
the human material for my task. I should 
know, meanwhile, that if indeed loyalty, unlike 
the "mercy" of Portia's speech, is not always 
mightiest in the mightiest, it certainly, like 
mercy, becomes the throned monarch better 
than his crown. So that I should be sure of 
this good of loyalty as something worthy to 
be carried, so far as I could carry it, to every- 
body, lofty or humble. 

Thus surely it would be humane and reason- 
able for me to define my cause to myself, — 
if only I could be assured that there is indeed 
some practical way of making loyalty to 
loyalty the actual cause of my life. Our 
question therefore becomes this : Is there a 
practical way of serving the universal human 
cause of loyalty to loyalty? And if there is 

127 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



such a way, what is it ? Can we see how per- 
sonally so to act that we bring loyalty on 
earth to a fuller fruition, to a wider range of 
efficacy, to a more effective sovereignty over 
the lives of men ? If so, then indeed we can 
see how to work for the cause of the genuine 
kingdom of heaven. 

VI 

Yet I fear that as you have listened to this 
sketch of a possible and reasonable cause, 
such as could be a proper object of our loy- 
alty, you will all the while have objected: 
This may be a definition of a possible cause, 
but it is an unpractical definition. For what 
is there that one can do to further the loyalty 
of mankind in general ? Humanitarian efforts 
are an old story. They constantly are limited 
in their effectiveness both by the narrowness 
of our powers, and by the complexity of the 
human nature which we try to improve. And 
if any lesson of philanthropy is well known, 
it is this, that whoever tries simply to help 
mankind as a whole, loses his labor, so long as 

128 



LOYALTY TO LOYALTY 



he does not first undertake to help those near- 
est to him. Loyalty to the cause of universal 
loyalty — how, then, shall it constitute any 
practical working scheme of life ? 

I answer at once that the individual man, 
with his limited powers, can indeed serve the 
cause of universal loyalty only by limiting his 
undertakings to some decidedly definite per- 
sonal range. He must have his own special 
and personal cause. But this cause of his 
can indeed be chosen and determined so as to 
constitute a deliberate effort to further uni- 
versal loyalty. When I begin to show you 
how this may be, I shall at once pass from 
what may have seemed to you a very unprac- 
tical scheme of life, to a realm of familiar 
and commonplace virtuous activities. The 
only worth of my general scheme will then lie 
in the fact that, in the light of this scheme, we 
can, as it were, see the commonplace virtues 
transfigured and glorified by their relation to 
the one highest cause of all. My thesis is 
that all the commonplace virtues, in so far as 
they are indeed defensible and effective, are 

k 129 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

special forms of loyalty to loyalty, and are to be 
justified, centralized, inspired, by the one su- 
preme effort to do good, namely, the effort to 
make loyalty triumphant in the lives of all men. 

The first consideration which I shall here 
insist upon is this : Loyalty, as we have all 
along seen, depends upon a very character- 
istic and subtle union of natural interest, and 
of free choice. Nobody who merely follows 
his natural impulses as they come is loyal. 
Yet nobody can be loyal without depending 
upon and using his natural impulses. If I 
am to be loyal, my cause must from moment 
to moment fascinate me, awaken my muscular 
vigor, stir me with some eagerness for work, 
even if this be painful work. I cannot be 
loyal to barren abstractions. I can only be 
loyal to what my life can interpret in bodily 
deeds. Loyalty has its elemental appeal to 
my whole organism. My cause must become 
one with my human life. Yet all this must 
occur not without my willing choice. I must 
control my devotion. It will possess me, but 
not without my voluntary complicity; for I 

130 



LOYALTY TO LOYALTY 



shall accept the possession. It is, then, with 
the cause to which you personally are loyal, as 
it was with divine grace in an older theology. 
The cause must control you, as divine grace 
took saving control of the sinner; but only 
your own will can accept this control, and a 
grace that merely compels can never save. 

Now that such an union of choice with 
natural interest is possible, is a fact of human 
nature, which every act of your own, in your 
daily calling, may be used to exemplify. You 
cannot do steady work without natural in- 
terest; but whoever is the mere prey of this 
passing interest does no steady work. Loy- 
alty is a perfect synthesis of certain natural 
desires, of some range of social conformity, 
and of your own deliberate choice. 

In order to be loyal, then, to loyalty, I must 
indeed first choose forms of loyal conduct 
which appeal to my own nature. This means 
that, upon one side of my life, I shall have to 
behave much as the most unenlightened of 
the loyal do. I shall serve causes such as my 
natural temperament and my social oppor- 

131 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



tunities suggest to me. I shall choose friends 
whom I like. My family, my community, 
my country, will be served partly because I 
find it interesting to be loyal to them. 

Nevertheless, upon another side, all these 
my more natural and, so to speak, accidental 
loyalties, will be controlled and unified by a 
deliberate use of the principle that, whatever 
my cause, it ought to be such as to further, 
so far as in me lies, the cause of universal 
loyalty. Hence I shall not permit my choice 
of my special causes to remain a mere chance. 
My causes must form a system. They must 
constitute in their entirety a single cause, my 
life of loyalty. When apparent conflicts arise 
amongst the causes in which I am interested, 
I shall deliberately undertake, by devices 
which we shall hereafter study in these lec- 
tures, to reduce the conflict to the greatest 
possible harmony. Thus, for instance, I may 
say, to one of the causes in which I am natu- 
rally bound up : — 

" I could not love thee, dear, so much, 
Loved I not honour more." 

132 



LOYALTY TO LOYALTY 



And in this familiar spirit my loyalty will aim 
to be, even within the limits of my own per- 
sonal life, an united, harmonious devotion, 
not to various conflicting causes, but to one 
system of causes, and so to one cause. 

Since this one cause is my choice, the cause 
of my life, my social station will indeed sug- 
gest it to me. My natural powers and pref- 
erences will make it fascinating to me, and 
yet I will never let mere social routine, or 
mere social tradition, or mere private caprice, 
impose it upon me. I will be individualistic 
in my loyalty, carefully insisting, however, 
that whatever else I am, I shall be in all my 
practical activity a loyal individual, and, so 
far as in me lies, one who chooses his per- 
sonal causes for the sake of the spread of 
universal loyalty. Moreover, my loyalty will 
be a growing loyalty. Without giving up 
old loyalties I shall annex new ones. There 
will be evolution in my loyalty. 

The choice of my cause will in consequence 
be such as to avoid unnecessary conflict with 
the causes of others. So far I shall indeed 

133 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

negatively show loyalty to loyalty. It shall 
not be my cause to destroy other men's loyalty. 
Yet since my cause, thus chosen and thus 
organized, still confines me to my narrow 
personal range, and since I can do so little 
directly for mankind, you may still ask whether, 
by such a control of my natural interests, I 
am indeed able to do much to serve the cause 
of universal loyalty. 

Well, it is no part of the plan of this dis- 
course to encourage illusions about the range 
of influence that any one poor mortal can 
exert. But that by the mere force of my prac- 
tical and personal loyalty, if I am indeed loyal, 
I am doing something for the cause of universal 
loyalty, however narrow my range of deeds, 
this a very little experience of the lives of 
other people tends to teach me. For who, 
after all, most encourages and incites me to 
loyalty? I answer, any loyal human being, 
whatever his cause, so long as his cause does 
not arouse my hatred, and does not directly 
injure my chance to be loyal. My fellow's 
special and personal cause need not be directly 

134 



LOYALTY TO LOYALTY 



mine. Indirectly he inspires me by the very 
contagion of his loyalty. He sets me the 
example. By his loyalty he shows me the 
worth of loyalty. Those humble and obscure 
folk of whom I have before spoken, how pre- 
cious they are to us all as inspiring examples, 
because of their loyalty to their own. 

From what men, then, have I gained the 
best aid in discovering how to be myself 
loyal? From the men whose personal cause 
is directly and consciously one with my own ? 
That is indeed sometimes the case. But others, 
whose personal causes were apparently remote 
in very many ways from mine, have helped 
me to some of my truest glimpses of loyalty. 

For instance : There was a friend of my 
own youth whom I have not seen for years, 
who once faced the choice between a schol- 
arly career that he loved, on the one hand, and 
a call of honor, upon the other, — who could 
have lived out that career with worldly success 
if he had only been willing to conspire with 
his chief to deceive the public about a matter 
of fact, but who unhesitatingly was loyal to 

135 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

loyalty, who spoke the truth, who refused to 
conspire, and who, because his chief was a 
plausible and powerful man, thus delib- 
erately wrecked his own worldly chances once 
for all, and retired into a misunderstood ob- 
scurity in order that his fellow-men might 
henceforth be helped to respect the truth 
better. Now, the worldly career which that 
friend thus sacrificed for the sake of his loy- 
alty is far from mine ; the causes that he has 
since loyally served have not of late brought 
him near to me in worldly doings. I am not 
sure that we should ever have kept our inter- 
ests in close touch with one another even if we 
had lived side by side. For he was and is a 
highly specialized type of man, austere, and a 
little disposed, like many scholars, to a life 
apart. For the rest, I have never myself 
been put in such a place as his was when he 
chose to make his sacrifice, and have never 
had his great choice set before me. Nor has 
the world rewarded him at all fairly for his 
fidelity. He is, then, as this world goes, not 
now near to me and not a widely influential 

136 



LOYALTY TO LOYALTY 

man. Yet I owe him a great debt. He 
showed me, by the example of his free sacri- 
fice, a good in loyalty which I might other- 
wise have been too blind to see. He is a man 
who does not love flattery. It would be use- 
less for me now to offer to him either words 
of praise or words of comfort. He made his 
choice with a single heart and a clear head, 
and he has always declined to be praised. But 
it will take a long time, in some other world, 
should I meet him in such a realm, to tell him 
how much I owe to his example, how much he 
inspired me, or how many of his fellows he had 
indirectly helped to their own loyalty. For I 
believe that a good many others besides myself 
indirectly owe far more to him than he knows, 
or than they know. I believe that certain 
standards of loyalty and of scientific truth- 
fulness in this country are to-day higher than 
they were because of the self -surrendering act 
of that one devoted scholar. 

Loyalty, then, is contagious. It infects not 
only the fellow-servant of your own special 
cause, but also all who know of this act. 

137 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

Loyalty is a good that spreads. Live it and 
you thereby cultivate it in other men. Be 
faithful, then, so one may say, to the loyal man ; 
be faithful over your few things, for the spirit 
of loyalty, secretly passing from you to many 
to whom you are a stranger, may even thereby 
make you unconsciously ruler over many 
things. Loyalty to loyalty is then no unprac- 
tical cause. And you serve it not by becom- 
ing a mere citizen of the world, but by serving 
your own personal cause. We set before you, 
then, no unpractical rule when we repeat our 
moral formula in this form: Find your own 
cause, your interesting, fascinating, personally 
engrossing cause ; serve it with all your might 
and soul and strength; but so choose your 
cause, and so serve it, that thereby you show 
forth your loyalty to loyalty, so that because of 
your choice and service of your cause, there is 
a maximum of increase of loyalty amongst 
your fellow-men. 

VII 

Yet herewith we have only begun to indi- 
cate how the cause of loyalty to loyalty may 

138 



LOYALTY TO LOYALTY 



be made a cause that one can practically, 
efficaciously, and constantly serve. Loyalty, 
namely, is not a matter merely of to-day or of 
yesterday. The loyal have existed since civ- 
ilization began. And, even so, loyalty to 
loyalty is not a novel undertaking. It began 
to be effective from the time when first people 
could make and keep a temporary truce dur- 
ing a war, and when first strangers were re- 
garded as protected by the gods, and when 
first the duties of hospitality were recognized. 
The way to be loyal to loyalty is therefore 
laid down in precisely the rational portion of 
the conventional morality which human ex- 
perience has worked out. 

Herewith we approach a thesis which is 
central in my whole philosophy of loyalty. 
I announced that thesis in other words in the 
opening lecture. My thesis is that all those 
duties which we have learned to recognize as 
the fundamental duties of the civilized man, 
the duties that every man owes to every man, 
are to be rightly interpreted as special in- 
stances of loyalty to loyalty. In other words, 

139 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

all the recognized virtues can be defined in 
terms of our concept of loyalty. And this is 
why I assert that, when rightly interpreted, 
loyalty is the whole duty of man. 

For consider the best-known facts as to the 
indirect influence of certain forms of loyal 
conduct. When I speak the truth, my act is 
directly an act of loyalty to the personal tie 
which then and there binds me to the man to 
whom I consent to speak. My special cause 
is, in such a case, constituted by this tie. My 
fellow and I are linked in a certain unity, — 
the unity of some transaction which involves 
our speech one to another. To be ready to 
speak the truth to my fellow is to have, just 
then, no eye to see and no tongue to speak save 
as this willingly accepted tie demands. In 
so far, then, speaking the truth is a special 
instance of loyalty. But whoever speaks the 
truth, thereby does what he then can do to 
help everybody to speak the truth. For he 
acts so as to further the general confidence 
of man in man. How far such indirect in- 
fluence may extend, no man can predict. 

140 



LOYALTY TO LOYALTY 



Precisely so, in the commercial world, hon- 
esty in business is a service, not merely and 
not mainly to the others who are parties to 
the single transaction in which at any one 
time this faithfulness is shown. The single 
act of business fidelity is an act of loyalty to 
that general confidence of man in man upon 
which the whole fabric of business rests. 
On the contrary, the unfaithful financier 
whose disloyalty is the final deed that lets 
loose the avalanche of a panic, has done far 
more harm to general public confidence than 
he could possibly do to those whom his act 
directly assails. Honesty, then, is ow^ed not 
merely and not even mainly to those with 
whom we directly deal when we do honest 
acts; it is owed to mankind at large, and it 
benefits the community and the general cause 
of commercial loyalty. 

Such a remark is in itself a commonplace; 
but it serves to make concrete my general the- 
sis that every form of dutiful action is a case of 
loyalty to loyalty. For what holds thus of 
truthfulness and of commercial honesty holds, 

141 



THE PHILOSOPHY OP LOYALTY 



I assert, of every form of dutiful action. Each 
such form is a special means for being, by a 
concrete deed, loyal to loyalty. 

We have sought for the worthy cause ; and 
we have found it. This simplest possible of 
considerations serves to turn the chaotic 
mass of separate precepts of which our ordi- 
nary conventional moral code consists into 
a system unified by the one spirit of universal 
loyalty. By your individual deed you indeed 
cannot save the world, but you can at any 
moment do what in you lies to further the 
cause which both for you and for the human 
world constitutes the supreme good, namely, 
the cause of universal loyalty. Herein con- 
sists your entire duty. 

Review in the light of this simple considera- 
tion, the usually recognized range of human 
duties. How easily they group themselves 
about the one principle : Be loyal to loyalty. 

Have I, for instance, duties to myself? 
Yes, precisely in so far as I have the duty to 
be actively loyal at all. For loyalty needs not 
only a willing, but also an effective servant, 

142 



LOYALTY TO LOYALTY 

My duty to myself is, then, the duty to pro- 
vide my cause with one who is strong enough 
and skilful enough to be effective according 
to my own natural powers. The care of 
health, self-cultivation, self-control, spiritual 
power — these are all to be morally estimated 
with reference to the one principle that, since 
I have no eyes to see or tongue to speak save as 
the cause commands, I will be as worthv an 
instrument of the cause as can be made, by 
my own efforts, out of the poor material which 
my scrap of human nature provides. The 
highest personal cultivation for which I have 
time is thus required by our principle. But 
self-cultivation which is not related to loyalty 
is worthless. 

Have I private and personal rights, which 
I ought to assert? Yes, precisely in so far 
as my private powers and possessions are 
held in trust for the cause, and are, upon 
occasion, to be defended for the sake of the 
cause. My rights are morally the outcome 
of my loyalty. It is my right to protect my 
service, to maintain my office, aiid to keep 

143 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



my own merely in order that I may use my 
own as the cause commands. But rights 
which are not determined by my loyalty 
are vain pretence. 

As to my duties to my neighbors, these 
are defined by a well-known tradition in 
terms of two principles, justice and benevo- 
lence. These two principles are mere aspects 
of our one principle. Justice means, in 
general, fidelity to human ties in so far as 
they are ties. Justice thus concerns itself 
with what may be called the mere forms in 
which loyalty expresses itself. Justice, there- 
fore, is simply one aspect of loyalty — the more 
formal and abstract side of loval life. If 
you are just, you are decisive in your choice 
of your personal cause, you are faithful to 
the loyal decision once made, you keep your 
promise, you speak the truth, you respect 
the loyal ties of all other men, and you con- 
tend with other men only in so far as the 
defence of your own cause, in the interest of 
loyalty to the universal cause of loyalty, 
makes such contest against aggression un- 

144 



LOYALTY TO LOYALTY 



avoidable. All these types of activity, 
within the limits that loyalty determines, are 
demanded if you are to be loyal to loyalty. 
Our principle thus at once requires them, and 
enables us to define their range of application. 
But justice, without loyalty, is a vicious for- 
malism. 

Benevolence, on the other hand, is that 
aspect of loyalty which directly concerns itself 
with your influence upon the inner life of 
human beings who enjoy, who suffer, and 
whose private good is to be affected by your 
deeds. Since no personal good that your 
fellow can possess is superior to his own 
loyalty, your own loyalty to loyalty is itself 
a supremely benevolent type of activity. 
And since your fellow-man is an instrument 
for the furtherance of the cause of universal 
loyalty, his welfare also concerns you, in so 
far as, if you help him to a more efficient life, 
you make him better able to be loyal. Thus 
benevolence is an inevitable attendant of 
loyalty. And the spirit of loyalty to loy- 
alty enables us to define wherein consists a 

l 145 



THE PHILOSOPHY OP LOYALTY 

wise benevolence. Benevolence without loy- 
alty is a dangerous sentiment alism. Thus 
viewed, then, loyalty to universal loyalty is 
indeed the fulfilment of the whole law. 



140 



IV 

CONSCIENCE 



LECTURE IV 



CONSCIENCE 

ONE of the main purposes of these lectures 
is to simplify our conceptions of duty and 
of the good. When I am in a practical per- 
plexity, such as often arises in daily life, that 
friend can best advise me who helps me to 
ignore useless complications, to see simply 
and directly, to look at the central facts of 
my situation. And even so, when a moral- 
ist attempts a rational theory of duty, he 
ought, like the practical adviser of a friend 
in perplexity, to do what he can to rid our 
moral situation of its confusing complications. 
In these lectures I am trying to accomplish 
this end by centralizing our duties about the 
3ne conception of loyalty. 

I 

Conventional morality, as it is usually 
taught to us, consists of a maze of precepts. 
Some of these precepts we have acquired 

149 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

through the influence of Christianity. Some 
of them are distinctly unchristian, or even 
antichristian. Whatever their origin, whether 
Christian or Greek or barbarian, they lie 
side by side in our minds; and sometimes 
they tend to come into conflict with one 
another. Be just; but also be kind. Be 
generous; but also be strict in demanding 
what is your due. Live for others; but be 
careful of your own dignity, and assert your 
rights. Love all mankind; but resent in- 
sults, and be ready to slay the enemies of 
your country. Take no thought for the 
morrow; but be careful to save and to in- 
sure. Cultivate yourself; but always sacrifice 
yourself. Forget yourself; but never be so 
thoughtless in conduct that others shall justly 
say, "You have forgotten yourself/ 5 Be mod- 
erate in all things; but know no moderation 
in your devotion to righteousness. Such are 
a few of the well-known paradoxes of our 
popular morality. And these paradoxes are, 
for the most part, no mere accidents. Nearly 
all of these apparently conflicting moral max- 

150 



CONSCIENCE 



ims express some significant truth. What we 
want is a method of finding our way through 
the maze, a principle that shall unify our 
moral life, and that shall enable us to solve 
its paradoxes. 

Such a centralizing and unifying principle 
we tried to propose at the last lecture. Our 
topic in the foregoing discussion was the 
question: By what criterion may we know 
that a proposed cause is one which is worthy 
of our loyalty? We answered the question 
by asserting that there is in any case one 
cause which is worthy of every man's loyalty. 
And that is the cause of loyalty itself. Do 
what you can to make men loyal, and to keep 
them in a loyal attitude ; this was the sense of 
the general precept that we derived from our 
study of the value of loyalty to those who are 
loyal. Whoever follows this precept inevi- 
tably defines for himself a cause, and becomes 
loyal to that cause. His sovereign and central 
moral maxim may otherwise be stated thus: 
Be loyal to loyalty. 

Our reasons for asserting that this maxim 

151 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

is a sound guide to dutiful action were these: 
First, the primal fact that loyalty, in any man 
who possesses it, is his supreme good. Sec- 
ondly, the further fact that such loyalty is not 
a good which only a few are able to get, — an 
aristocratic possession of a small company of 
saints ; but it is, on the contrary, a good which 
is accessible to all sorts and conditions of men, 
so far as they have normal human interests 
and normal self-control. We saw that there 
is no sort of wholesome human life which does 
not furnish opportunities for loyalty. And 
whoever is loyal wins, whatever his social 
station, and precisely in so far as he is loyal, 
the same general form of spiritual fulfilment, 
namely, self-possession through self -surrender. 
The keeper of a lonely lighthouse and the 
leader of a busy social order, the housemaid 
and the king, have almost equal opportunities 
to devote the self to its own chosen cause, and 
to win the good of such devotion. In conse- 
quence of these two considerations, whoever 
undertakes to further the general cause of 
loyalty, is certainly aiming at the supreme 

152 



CONSCIENCE 



good of mankind at large. His cause, there- 
fore, is certainly a worthy cause. 

Nor is the undertaking to further the gen- 
eral cause of loyalty itself an unpractical 
undertaking, — a vague philanthropy. On 
the contrary, of all the efforts that you can 
make on behalf of your fellow-men, the effort 
to make them loyal to causes of their own is 
probably the most generally and widely prac- 
ticable. It is notoriously hard, by any direct 
philanthropic effort, to give good fortune to any 
man, except to some few of those with whose 
fortunes you are most closely linked. Certain 
forms of suffering can be relieved by the hospi- 
tals, or by private skill and kindness. But 
when the sufferer is relieved, he stands once 
more merely on the threshold of life, and the 
question, What can you do to give him life it- 
self ? is not yet answered. If, hereupon, you try 
to make your fellow-man prosperous, by offer- 
ing to him unearned good fortune, you may in 
fact merely teach him to be wasteful and in- 
dolent. If you seek to deal out happiness to 
him by devices of your own, you find that he 

153 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

generally prefers to look for happiness in his 
own way. If you attempt to give him content- 
ment, you come into conflict with his insati- 
able natural desires. 

But if you undertake to make him loyal, 
there is indeed much that you can do. For, 
as I pointed out at the close of the last lecture, 
all of what common sense rightly regards as 
your ordinary duties to mankind may be 
viewed, and ought to be viewed, as prac- 
tically effective ways of helping on the cause 
of general loyalty. Thus, you can speak the 
truth to your fellow, and can thereby help 
him to a better confidence in mankind. This 
confidence in mankind will aid him in turn to 
speak the truth himself. And in truth-speak- 
ing there will be for him much real peace, for 
truth-speaking is a form of loyalty and will 
aid him to be otherwise loyal to his own. Pre- 
cisely so, there are as many other ways of 
helping him to be loyal as there are other 
such obvious and commonly recognized du- 
ties to be done in your ordinary and peaceful 
dealings with him. 

154 



CONSCIENCE 



Let me mention one further instance that 
was not used amongst our illustrations at the 
last meeting: The true value of courtesy 
in ordinary human intercourse lies in the fact 
that courtesy is one expression of loyalty to 
loyalty, and helps every one who either re- 
ceives or witnesses courtesy to assume him- 
self a loyal attitude towards all the causes that 
are represented by the peaceful and reasonable 
dealings of man with man. The forms of 
courtesy, in fact, are largely derived from 
what once were, or still are, more or less cere- 
monious expressions of loyal devotion. Cour- 
tesy, then, maybe defined as an explicit assump- 
tion of a loyal bearing. To adopt such a 
bearing with a real sincerity of heart is to 
express, in your passing actions, loyalty to 
universal loyalty. To act thus towards your 
individual fellow-man is then and there to 
help all who know of your act to be loyal. 
Courtesy, then, is a duty owed not so much to 
the individual to whom you are courteous, 
as to humanity at large. 

There are, then, many ways of aiding your 

155 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



fellow-man to be loyal. Now, as we also 
set forth at the last lecture, one of the most 
effective of these ways lies in being loyal your- 
self to some personally chosen and determi- 
nate social cause which constitutes your busi- 
ness. This special cause need not be one in 
which the particular fellow-man whom you 
are just now to help is, at the moment, directly 
interested. Your very loyalty to your own 
cause will tend to prove infectious. Who- 
ever is loyal to his own therefore helps on the 
cause of universal loyalty by his every act 
of devotion, precisely in so far as he refrains 
from any hostile attack upon the loyalty of 
other people, and simply lets his example of 
loyalty work. Whoever makes the further- 
ance of universal loyalty his cause, lacks, 
therefore, neither practical means nor pres- 
ent opportunity for serving his cause. 

To each man our principle therefore says: 
Live in your own way a loyal life and one 
subject to the general principle of loyalty to 
loyalty. Serve your own cause, but so choose 
it and so serve it that in consequence of your 

156 



CONSCIENCE 



life loyalty amongst men shall prosper. For- 
tune may indeed make the range of your 
choice of your calling very narrow. Neces- 
sity may bind you to an irksome round of 
tasks. But sweeten these with whatever loy- 
alty you can consistently get into your life. 
Let loyalty be your pearl of great price. Sell 
all the happiness that you possess or can get 
in disloyal or in non-loyal activities, and buy 
that pearl. When you once have found, or 
begun to find, your personal cause, be as stead- 
ily faithful to it as loyalty to loyalty henceforth 
permits. That is, if you find that a cause 
once chosen does indeed involve disloyalty 
to loyalty, as one might find who, having 
sworn fidelity to a leader, afterwards discov- 
ered his leader to be a traitor to the cause 
of mankind, you may have altogether to 
abandon the cause first chosen. But never 
abandon a cause except for the sake of some 
higher or deeper loyalty such as actually 
requires the change. 

Meanwhile, the principle of loyalty to 
loyalty obviously requires you to respect loyalty 

157 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

in all men, wherever you find it. If youl 
fellow's cause has, in a given case, assailed 
your own, and if, in the world as it is, conflict 
is inevitable, you may then have to war with 
your fellow's cause, in order to be loyal to 
your own. But even then, you may never 
assail whatever is sincere and genuine about 
his spirit of loyalty. Even if your fellow's 
cause involves disloyalty to mankind at large, 
you may not condemn the loyalty of your fellow 
in so far as it is loyalty. You may condemn 
only his blindly chosen cause. All the loyal 
are brethren. They are children of one 
spirit. Loyalty to loyalty involves the active 
furtherance of this spirit w T herever it appears. 
Fair play in sport, chivalrous respect for the 
adversary in war, tolerance of the sincere 
beliefs of other men, — all these virtues are 
thus to be viewed as mere variations of loy- 
alty to loyalty. Prevent the conflict of loyal- 
ties when you can, minimize such conflict 
where it exists, and, by means of fair play 
and of the chivalrous attitude towards the 
opponent, utilize even conflict, where it is 

158 



CONSCIENCE 



inevitable, so as to further the cause of loyalty 
to loyalty. Such maxims are obvious conse- 
quences of our principle. Do we not gain, 
then, a great deal from our principle in the way 
of unifying our moral code ? 

II 

But next, as to those just-mentioned para- 
doxes of popular morality, do we not gain 
from our principle a guide to help us through 
the maze? "Be just; but also be kind." 
These two precepts, so far as they are sound, 
merely emphasize, as we pointed out at the 
close of our last lecture, two distinct but 
inseparable aspects of loyalty. My cause 
links my fellow and myself by social ties 
which, in the light of our usual human inter- 
pretation of life, appear to stand for super- 
personal interests, — for interests in property 
rights, in formal obligations, in promises, in 
various abstractly definable relations. If I 
am loyal, I respect these relations. And I do so 
since, from the very definition of a cause to 
which one can be loyal, this cause will become 

159 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

nothing unless these ties are preserved intact. 
But to respect relations as such is to be what 
men call just. Meanwhile, our common cause 
also personally interests both my fellow and 
myself. So far as we both know the cause, 
we love it, and delight in it. Hence in being 
loyal to our cause, I am also being kind to my 
fellow. For hereby I further his delight in 
just so far as I help him to insight. But 
kindness which is not bound up with loyalty 
is as a sounding brass and as a tinkling cymbal, 
a mere sentiment alism. And abstract justice, 
apart from loyalty, is a cruel formalism. My 
fellow wants to be loyal. This is his deepest 
need. If I am loyal to that need, I therefore 
truly delight him. But kindness that is not 
bound up with loyalty may indeed amuse 
my fellow for a moment. Yet like "fancy," 
such kindness "dies in the cradle where it 
lies." Even so, if I am loyal, I am also just. 
But justice that is no aspect of loyalty has no 
reason for existence. The true relations of 
benevolence and justice can therefore be best 
defined in terms of our conception of loyalty. 

160 



CONSCIENCE 



If any one says, "I will show thee my justice 
or my kindness without my loyalty," the loyal 
man may rightly respond, " I will show thee my 
kindness and my justice by my loyalty." 

In a similar fashion, the moral problems 
regarding the right relations of strictness to 
generosity, of prudent foresight to present 
confidence, of self-surrender to self-assertion, 
of love to the righteous resistance of enemies, 
— all these moral problems, I say, are best to 
be solved in terms of the principle of loyalty to 
loyalty. As to the problem of the true concern 
and regard for the self, the loyal man culti- 
vates himself, and is careful of his property 
rights, just in order to furnish to his cause an 
effective instrument; but he aims to forget 
precisely so much of himself as is, at any time, 
an obstruction to his loyalty ; and he also aims 
to be careless of whatever about his private 
fortunes may be of no importance to his ser- 
vice of the cause. When he asserts himself, 
he does so because he has neither eyes to see nor 
tongue to speak save as his cause commands ; 
and it is of precisely such self-sacrificing self- 

M 161 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

assertion that the foes of his cause would do 
well to beware. All the paradoxes about the 
care of self and the abandonment of self are 
thus soluble in terms of loyalty. Whoever 
knows and possesses the loyal attitude, ipso 
facto solves these paradoxes in each special 
case as it arises. And whoever comprehends 
the nature of loyalty to loyalty, as it is ex- 
pressed in the form of fair play in sport, of 
chivalry in war, of tolerance in belief, and of 
the spirit that seeks to prevent the conflict of 
loyalties where such prevention is possible, 
— whoever, I say, thus comprehends what 
loyalty to loyalty means, holds the key to all 
the familiar mysteries about the right relation 
of the love of man to the strenuous virtues, 
and to the ethics of conflict. 

Ill 

As you see, it is my deliberate intention to 
maintain that the principle of loyalty to loyalty 
is a sufficient expression of what common sense 
calls "the dictates of conscience." When I 
state this thesis, it leads me, however, to a 

162 



CONSCIENCE 



somewhat new question, which the title of 
this lecture is intended to emphasize. 

Stated practically, this our next question 
takes the form of asking: Is the principle of 
loyalty to loyalty not only a means of solving 
certain perplexities, but an actually general, 
safe, and sufficient test of what is right and 
wrong in the doubtful moral situations which 
may arise in daily life ? We have shown that 
the well-recognized duties and virtues, such 
as those which have to do with truth-speak- 
ing, with courtesy, with fair play in sport, and 
with chivalrous regard for enemies, can indeed 
be regarded, if we choose, as special forms of 
loyalty to loyalty. But it is indeed one 
thing (as you may now interpose) to interpret 
in terms of our principle certain virtues or 
duties that we already recognize. It is another 
thing to use the concept of loyalty to loyalty 
as an universal means of finding out what it is 
right to do when one is otherwise in doubt. 
Is our principle always a serviceable prac- 
tical guide ? Or, to use the well-known term, 
does our principle adequately express what 

163 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



people usually mean by the "dictates of con- 
science" ? 

The word "conscience/' which here becomes 
important for our philosophy of loyalty, is a 
term of many uses. The problem as to the 
true nature of the human conscience is a com- 
plicated and difficult one. I shall here deal 
with the matter only in so far as is necessary 
for our own distinctly practical purpose. In 
expounding my precept, Be loyal to loyalty, I 
have set forth what does indeed pretend to be 
a general guiding maxim for conduct. But 
most of us, when we say, " My conscience dic- 
tates this or this sort of conduct," are not 
disposed to think of conscience as definable 
in terms of any one maxim. Our conscience 
seems to us to represent, in our ordinary lives, 
a good many related but nevertheless dis- 
tinct motives, such as prudence, charity, 
reasonableness, piety, and so on. Conscience 
also seems to us somewhat mysterious in 
many of its demands, so that we often say, 
"I do not precisely know why this or this is 
right; but I feel sure that it is right, for my 

164 



CONSCIENCE 



conscience tells me so." Since, then, con- 
science seems so complex and sometimes so 
mysterious a power, you may naturally hesi- 
tate to accept the views of a moralist who 
attempts, as you may think, to simplify too 
much the requirements of conscience. You 
may still insist that the moral doctrine which 
I have so far set forth is in one respect like all 
other philosophies of conduct that fill the 
history of ethical thought; because, as you 
may insist, this theory is powerless to tell 
any one what to do when a really perplexing 
case of conscience arises. 

The reproach that moral philosophers have 
fine-sounding principles to report, but can 
never tell us how these principles practically 
apply, except when the cases are such as 
common sense has already decided, — this is 
an old objection to philosophical ethics. I 
want to show you how I myself meet that 
objection, and in what way, and to what extent, 
as I think, the principle of loyalty to loyalty 
does express the true dictates of conscience, 
and does tell us what to do in doubtful cases. 

165 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



What is conscience? You will all agree 
that the word names a mental possession of 
ours which enables us to pass some sort of 
judgment, correct or mistaken, upon moral 
questions as they arise. My conscience, then, 
belongs to my mental equipment, and tells 
me about right and wrong conduct. More- 
over, my conscience approves or disapproves 
my conduct, excuses me or accuses me. 
About the general nature and office of the 
conscience we all of us, as I suppose, so far 
agree. Our differences regarding our con- 
science begin when questions arise of the 
following sort : Is our conscience inborn ? 
Is it acquired by training? Are its dictates 
the same in all men ? Is it God-given ? Is it 
infallible ? Is it a separate power of the mind ? 
Or is it simply a name for a collection of habits 
of moral judgment which we have acquired 
through social training, through reasoning, 
and through personal experience of the con- 
sequences of conduct ? 



166 



CONSCIENCE 



IV 

In trying to meet these questions so far as 
they here concern us, it is important next to 
note a few fundamental features which char- 
acterize the personal life of all of us. The 
first of these features appears if one, instead 
of stopping with the question, "What is my 
conscience?" goes deeper still and asks the 
question, "Who and what am I?" This 
latter question also has indeed countless as- 
pects, and a complete answer to it would con- 
stitute an entire system of metaphysics. But 
for our present purpose it is enough to note 
that I cannot answer the question, "Who am 
I ?" except in terms of some sort of statement 
of the plans and purposes of my life. In re- 
sponding to the question, "Who are you?" 
a man may first mention his name. But his 
name is a mere tag. He then often goes on to 
tell where he lives, and where he comes from. 
His home and his birthplace, however, are 
already what one may call purposeful aspects 
of his personality. For dwelling-place, coun- 

167 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



try, birthplace, and similar incidental facts 
about a man tend to throw light upon his per- 
sonality mainly because they are of importance 
for a further knowledge of his social relations, 
and so of his social uses and activities. 

But the answer to the question, "Who are 
you?" really begins in earnest when a man 
mentions his calling, and so actually sets out 
upon the definition of his purposes and of the 
way in which these purposes get expressed in 
his life. And when a man goes on to say, 
"I am the doer of these and these deeds, the 
friend of these friends, the enemy of these 
opposing purposes, the member of this family, 
the one whose ideals are such and such, and 
are so and so expressed in my life," the man 
expresses to you at length whatever is most ex- 
pressible and worth knowing in answer to the 
question, "Who are you?" 

To sum up, then, I should say that a person, 
an individual self, may be defined as a human 
life lived according to a plan. If a man could 
live with no plan at all, purposelessly and quite 
passively, he would in so far be an organism, 

168 



CONSCIENCE 



and also, if you choose, he would be a psycho- 
logical specimen, but he would be no per- 
sonality. Wherever there is personality, there 
are purposes worked out in life. If, as often 
happens, there are many purposes connected 
with the life of this human creature, many 
plans in this life, but no discoverable unity and 
coherence of these plans, then in so far there 
are many glimpses of selfhood, many fragmen- 
tary selves present in connection with the life 
of some human organism. But there is so far 
no one self, no one person discoverable. You 
are one self just in so far as the life that goes 
on in connection with your organism has some 
one purpose running through it. By the terms 
" this person " and " this self," then, we mean 
this human life in so far as it expresses some one 
purpose. Yet, of course, this one purpose which 
is expressed in the life of a single self need not 
be one which is defined by this self in abstract 
terms. On the contrary, most of us are aware 
that our lives are unified, after a fashion, by 
the very effort that we more or less vaguely 
make to assert ourselves somehow as individ- 

169 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



uals in our world. Many of us have not yet 
found out how it would be best to assert our- 
selves. But we are trying to find out. This 
very effort to find out gives already a certain 
unity of purpose to our lives. 

But in so far as we have indeed found out 
some cause, far larger than our individual 
selves, to which we are fully ready to be loyal, 
this very cause serves to give the required 
unity to our lives, and so to determine what 
manner of self each of us is, even though we 
chance to be unable to define in abstract terms 
what is the precise nature of this very cause. 
Loyalty may be sometimes almost dumb; it 
is so in many of those obscure and humble 
models of loyalty of whom I have already 
spoken. They express their loyalty clearly 
enough in deeds. They often could not very 
well formulate it in words. They could not 
give an abstract account of their business. Yet 
their loyalty gives them a business. It unifies 
their activities. It makes of each of these 
loyal beings an individual self, — a life unified 
by a purpose. This purpose may in such 

170 



CONSCIENCE 



cases come to consciousness merely as a willing 
hunger to serve the cause, a proud obedience 
to the ideal call. But in any case, wherever 
loyalty is, there is selfhood, personality, indi- 
vidual purpose embodied in a life. 

And now, further, if the argument of our 
first and second lectures is right, wherever a 
human selfhood gets practically and consciously 
unified, there is some form of loyalty. For, 
except in terms of some sort of loyal purpose, 
as we saw, this mass of instincts, of passions, 
of social interests, and of private rebellious- 
ness, whereof the nature of any one of us is 
originally compounded, can never get any 
effective unity whatever. 

To sum up so far, — a self is a life in so far 
as it is unified by a single purpose. Our 
loyalties furnish such purposes, and hence 
make of us conscious and unified moral per- 
sons. Where loyalty has not yet come to any 
sort of definiteness, there is so far present only 
a kind of inarticulate striving to be an indi- 
vidual self. This very search for one's true 
self is already a sort of life-purpose, which, as 

171 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



far as it goes, individuates the life of the person 
in question, and gives him a task. But loyalty 
brings the individual to full moral self-con- 
sciousness. It is devoting the self to a cause 
that, after all, first makes it a rational and uni- 
fied self, instead of what the life of too many a 
man remains, — namely, a cauldron of seeth- 
ing and bubbling efforts to be somebody, a 
cauldron which boils dry when life ends. 

V 

But what, you may now ask, has all this view 
of the self to do with conscience? I answer 
that the nature of conscience can be under- 
stood solely in terms of such a theory of the 
self as the one just sketched. 

Suppose that I am, in the foregoing sense, a 
more or less completely unified and loyal self. 
Then there are two aspects of this selfhood 
which is mine. I live a life ; and I have, as a 
loyal being, an ideal. The life itself is not the 
ideal. They are and always remain in some 
sense distinct. For no one act of my life, 
and no limited set of acts of mine, can ever 

172 



CONSCIENCE 



completely embody my ideal. My ideal comes 
to me from my cause, as the ideal of the Speaker 
of the House of Commons, in the story that 
we have already used to illustrate loyalty, 
came to him from the House. My cause, how- 
ever, is greater than my individual life. Hence 
it always sets before me an ideal which de- 
mands more of me than I have yet done, — ■ 
more, too, than I can ever at any one instant 
accomplish. Even because of this vastness 
of my ideal, even because that to which I am 
loyal is so much greater than I ever become, 
even because of all this can my ideal unify my 
life, and make a rational self of me. 

Hence, if I am indeed one self, my one ideal 
is always something that stands over against 
my actual life; and each act of this life has 
to be judged, estimated, determined, as to its 
moral value, in terms of the ideal. My cause, 
therefore, as it expresses itself to my own con- 
sciousness through my personal ideal, — my 
cause and my ideal taken together, and viewed 
as one, perform the precise function which tra- 
dition has attributed to conscience. My cause, 

173 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



then, for our philosophy of loyalty, is my con- 
science, — my cause as interpreted through my 
ideal of my personal life. When I look to my 
cause, it furnishes me with a conscience ; for 
it sets before me a plan or ideal of life, and 
then constantly bids me contrast this plan, 
this ideal, with my transient and momentary 
impulses. 

To illustrate : Were I a loyal judge on the 
bench, whose cause was my official function, 
then my judicial conscience would be simply 
my whole ideal as a judge, when this ideal was 
contrasted with any of my present and nar- 
rower views of the situation directly before me. 
If, at a given moment, I tended to lay unfair 
stress upon one side of a controversy that had 
been brought into my court, my ideal would 
say: But a judge is impartial. If I were dis- 
posed to decide with inadvised haste, the ideal 
would say : But a judge takes account of the 
whole law bearing on the case. If I were 
offered bribes, my judicial conscience would 
reject them as being once for all ideally intol- 
erable. In order to have such a judicial con- 

174 



CONSCIENCE 



science, I should, of course, have to be able to 
view my profession as the carrying out of some 
one purpose, and so as one cause. This pur- 
pose I should have learned, of course, from the 
traditions of the office. But I should have had 
willingly to adopt these traditions as my own, 
and to conceive my own life in terms of them, 
in order to have a judicial conscience of my 
own. Analogous comments could be made 
upon the conscience of an artist, of a states- 
man, of a friend, or of a devoted member of a 
family, of any one who has a conscience. To 
have a conscience, then, is to have a cause, to 
unify your life by means of an ideal determined 
by this cause, and to compare the ideal and 
the life. 

If this analysis is right, your conscience is 
simply that ideal of life which constitutes your 
moral personality. In having your conscience 
you become aware of your plan of being your- 
self and nobody else. Your conscience pre- 
sents to you this plan, however, in so far as the 
plan or ideal in question is distinct from the 
life in which you are trying to embody your 

175 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



plan. Your life as it is lived, your experi- 
ences, feelings, deeds, — these are the embodi- 
ment of your ideal plan, in so far as your ideal 
plan for your own individual life as this self, 
gets embodied at all. 

But no one act of yours ever expresses your 
plan of life perfectly. Since you thus always 
have your cause beyond you, there is always 
more to do. So the plan or ideal of life comes 
to stand over against your actual life as a gen- 
eral authority by which each deed is to be 
tested, just as the judicial conscience of the 
judge on the bench tests each of his official 
acts by comparing it with his personal ideal 
of what a judge should be. My conscience, 
therefore, is the very ideal that makes me this 
rational self, the very cause that inspires and 
that unifies me. Viewed as something within 
myself, my conscience is the spirit of the self, 
first moving on the face of the waters of natural 
desire, and then gradually creating the heav- 
ens and the earth of this life of the individual 
man. This spirit informs all of my true self, 
yet is nowhere fully expressed in any deed. 

176 



CONSCIENCE 



So that, in so far as we contrast the ideal with 
the single deed, we judge ourselves, condemn 
ourselves, or approve ourselves. 

Our philosophy of loyalty thus furnishes us 
with a theory of a certain kind of conscious- 
ness which, in any case, precisely fulfils the 
functions of the traditional conscience. I need 
hardly say that the conscience which I have 
now described is not in its entirety at all innate. 
On the contrary, it is the flower rather than the 
root of the moral life. But unquestionably 
we should never get it unless we possessed an 
innate power to become reasonable, unless we 
were socially disposed beings, unless we were 
able so to develop our reason and our social 
powers as to see that the good of mankind is 
indeed also our own good, and, in brief, unless 
we inherited a genuine moral nature. 

With this view of the nature of conscience, 
what can we say as to the infallibility of such 
a conscience ? I answer : My conscience is pre- 
cisely as fallible or as infallible as my choice of 
a cause is subject to error, or is of such nature 
as to lead me aright. Since loyalty, in so far 

it 177 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

as it is loyalty, is always a good, the conscience 
of any loyal self is never wholly a false guide. 
Since loyalty may be in many respects blind, 
one's conscience also may be in many respects 
misleading. On the other hand, your con- 
science, at any stage of its development, is 
unquestionably the best moral guide that you 
then have, simply because, so far as it is viewed 
as an authority outside of you, it is your ideal, 
your cause, set before you ; while, in so far as 
it is within you, it is the spirit of your own 
self, the very ideal that makes you any rational 
moral person whatever. Apart from it you 
are a mere pretence of moral personality, a 
manifold fermentation of desires. And as 
you have only your own life to live, your con- 
science alone can teach you how to live that 
life. But your conscience will doubtless grow 
with you, just as your loyalty and your cause 
will grow. The best way to make both of them 
grow is to render up your life to their service 
and to their expression. 

Conscience, as thus defined, is for each of 
us a personal affair. In so far as many of us 

178 



CONSCIENCE 



are fellow-servants of the same cause, and, 
above all, in so far as all of us, if we are en- 
lightened, are fellow-servants of the one cause 
of universal loyalty, we do indeed share in the 
same conscience. But in so far as no two of 
us can live the same life, or be the same indi- 
vidual human self, it follows that no two of us 
can possess identical consciences, and that no 
two of us should wish to do so. Your con- 
science is not mine; yet I share with you 
the same infinite realm of moral truth, and we 
are subject to the same requirement of loyalty 
to loyalty. This requirement must interpret 
itself to us all in endlessly varied ways. The 
loyal are not all monotonously doing the same 
thing. Yet they individually partake of the one 
endlessly varied and manifold spirit of loyalty. 

As to whether conscience is in any sense 
divine, we shall learn something in our closing 
lecture upon the relations of Loyalty and 
Religion, 

VI 

So far as is needful for our present practical 
purpose, the theory of the conscience which our 

179 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



philosophy of loyalty requires is now before 
you. We needed this theory in order to pre- 
pare the way for answering the question: 
In how far does the law, Be loyal to loyalty, 
enable us to decide cases of moral doubt ? In 
how far does this principle furnish a means 
of discovering these special precepts about 
single cases which common sense calls the 
"dictates of conscience"? 
s How do moral doubts arise in the mind of 
a loyal person ? I answer : Moral doubts arise 
in the loyal mind when there is an apparent 
conflict between loyalties. As a fact, that 
cause, which in any sense unifies a life as com- 
plex as my human life is, must of course be 
no perfectly simple cause. By virtue of my 
nature and of my social training, I belong to a 
family, to a community, to a calling, to a state, 
to humanity. In order to be loyal to loyalty, 
and in order to be a person at all, I must indeed 
unify my loyalty. In the meantime, however, 
I must also choose special causes to serve; 
and if these causes are to interest me, if they 
are to engross and to possess me, they must be 

180 



CONSCIENCE 



such as together appeal to many diverse sides 
of my nature; they must involve me in nu- 
merous and often conflicting social tasks ; they 
can form one cause only in so far as they con- 
stitute an entire system of causes. My loyalty 
will be subject, therefore, to the ancient diffi- 
culty regarding the one and the many. Unless 
it is one in its ultimate aim, it will be no loyalty 
to universal loyalty ; unless it is just to the va- 
ried instincts and to the manifold social interests 
of a being such as I am, it cannot engross me. 

Despite this great difficulty, however, the 
loyal all about us show us that this union of 
one and many in life is, at least in great por- 
tions of long human careers, a possible thing. 
We never completely win the union ; we never 
realize to the full the one loyal life ; but in so 
far as we are loyal, we win enough of this unity 
of life to be able to understand the ideal, and 
to make it our own guide. Our question still 
remains, however, this: Since the only loyal 
life that we can undertake to live is so complex, 
since the one cause of universal loyalty can 
only be served, by each of us, in a personal 

181 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



life wherein we have to try to unify various spe- 
cial loyalties, and since, in many cases, these 
special loyalties seem to us to conflict with one 
another, — how shall we decide, as between 
two apparently conflicting loyalties, which one 
to follow ? Does our principle tell us what to 
do when loyalties thus seem to us to be in con- 
flict with one another ? 

It is, of course, not sufficient to answer 
here that loyalty to loyalty requires us to do 
whatever can be done to harmonize apparently 
conflicting loyalties, and to remove the con- 
flict of loyalties from the world, and to utilize 
even conflict, where it is inevitable, so as to 
further general loyalty. That answer we have 
already considered in an earlier passage of this 
discussion. It is a sound answer; but it does 
not meet those cases where conflict is forced 
upon us, and where we ourselves must take 
sides, and must annul or destroy one or two 
conflicting loyalties. One or two illustrations 
of such a type will serve to show what sorts 
of moral doubts our own philosophy of loyalty 
has especially to consider. 

182 



CONSCIENCE 



At the outset of our Civil War, many men of 
the border states, and many who had already 
been in the service of the Union, but who were 
conscious of special personal duties to single 
states of the Union, found themselves in 
presence of a well-known conflict of loyalties. 
Consider the personal problem that the future 
General Lee had to solve. Could the precept, 
Be loyal to loyalty, and to that end, choose your 
own personal cause and be loyal thereto, — could 
this principle, you may say, have been of any 
service in deciding for Lee his personal problem 
at the critical moment ? 

Or again, to take a problem such as some of 
my own students have more than once urged, 
in various instances, as a test case for my 
theory of loyalty to decide : A young woman, 
after a thorough modern professional training, 
begins a career which promises not only worldly 
success, but general good to the community in 
which she works. She is heartily loyal to her 
profession. It is a beneficent profession. She 
will probably make her mark in that field if 
she chooses to go on. Meanwhile she is loyal 

183 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

to her own family. And into the home, which 
she has left for her work, disease, perhaps 
death, enters. Her younger brothers and sis- 
ters are now unexpectedly in need of such care 
as hers ; or the young family of her elder brother 
or sister, through the death of their father or 
mother, has come to be without due parental 
care. As elder sister or as maiden aunt this 
young woman could henceforth devote herself 
to family tasks that would mean very much 
for the little ones in question. But this devo- 
tion would also mean years of complete absorp- 
tion in these family tasks, and would also mean 
an entire abandonment of the profession so 
hopefully begun, and of all the good that she 
can now be fairly sure of doing if she continues 
in that field. 

What are the dictates of conscience ? How 
shall this young woman solve her problem? 
How shall she decide between these conflicting 
loyalties? To be loyal to the family, to the 
needs of brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, — 
surely this is indeed devotion of a self to a 
cause. But to be loyal to her chosen profes- 

184 



CONSCIENCE 



sion, which, in this case, is no mere hope, but 
which is already an actual and successful task, 
— is not that also loyalty to a cause ? And 
does the principle, Be loyal to loyalty, decide 
which of these two causes is the one for this 
young woman to serve ? 

These two cases of conscience may serve as 
examples of the vast range of instances of a 
conflict of loyalties. And now you may ask : 
What will our principle do to decide such 
cases ? 

VII 

I reply at once by emphasizing the fact that 
the precept, Be loyal to loyalty, implies two char- 
acteristics of loyal conduct which are, to my 
mind, inseparable. The first characteristic 
is Decisiveness on the part of the loyal moral 
agent. The second characteristic is Fidelity 
to loyal decisions once made, in so far as later 
insight does not clearly forbid the continuance 
of such fidelity. Let me indicate what I mean 
by these two characteristics. 

Loyalty to loyalty is never a merely pious 
wish. It is personal devotion. This devotion 

185 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

shows itself by action, not by mere sentiments* 
Loyalty to loyalty hence requires the choice of 
some definite mode of action. And this mode 
of action involves, in critical cases, some new 
choice of a personal cause, through which the 
loyal agent undertakes to serve henceforth, as 
best he can, the general cause of the loyalty 
of mankind. Now, my special choice of my 
personal cause is always fallible. For I can 
never know with certainty but that, if I were 
wiser, I should better see my way to serving 
universal loyalty than I now see it. Thus, if 
I choose to be loyal to loyalty by becoming 
a loyal clerk or a watchman or a lighthouse 
keeper, I can never know but that, in some 
other calling, I might have done better. Now, 
it is no part of the precept, Be loyal to loyalty, 
to tell me, or to pretend to tell me, what my 
most effective vocation is. Doubts about that 
topic are in so far not moral doubts. They are 
mere expressions of my general ignorance of the 
world and of my own powers. If I indeed hap- 
pen to know that I have no power to make a 
good clerk or a good watchman, the precept 

186 



CONSCIENCE 



about loyalty then tells me that it would be dis- 
loyal to waste my powers in an undertaking for 
which I am so unfit. If, of various possible 
ways of undertaking to be loyal to loyalty, 
my present insight already tells me that one 
will, in my case, certainly succeed best of all, 
then, indeed, the general principle of loyalty 
requires me to have neither eyes to see nor 
tongue to speak save as this best mode of ser- 
vice commands. But if, at the critical mo- 
ment, I cannot predict which of two modes of 
serving the cause of loyalty to loyalty will lead 
to the more complete success in such service, 
the general principle certainly cannot tell me 
which of these two modes of service to choose. 

And, nevertheless, the principle does not 
desert me, even at the moment of my great- 
est ignorance. It is still my guide. For it 
now becomes the principle, Have a cause; 
choose your cause; be decisive. In this form 
the principle is just as practical as it would be 
if my knowledge of the world and of my own 
powers were infallible. For it forbids coward- 
ice; it forbids hesitancy beyond the point 

187 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

where further consideration can be reason- 
ably expected, for the present, to throw new 
light on the situation. It forbids me to 
play Hamlet's part. It requires me, in a loyal 
spirit and in the light of all that I now know, 
to choose and to proceed to action, not as one 
who believes himself omniscient, but as one 
who knows that the only way to be loyal is to 
act loyally, however ignorantly one has to act. 

Otherwise stated, the case is this. I hesi- 
tate at the critical moment between conflicting 
causes. For the sake of loyalty to loyalty, 
which one of two conflicting special causes 
shall I henceforth undertake to serve? This 
is my question. If I knew what is to be the 
outcome, I could at once easily choose. I 
am ignorant of the outcome. In so far I 
indeed cannot tell which to choose. But in 
one respect I am, nevertheless, already com- 
mitted. I have already undertaken to be 
loyal to loyalty. In so far, then, I already 
have my cause. If so, however, I have neither 
eyes to see nor tongue to speak save as this 
my highest cause commands. Now, what 

188 



CONSCIENCE 



does this my highest cause, loyalty to loyalty, 
command ? It commands simply but im- 
peratively that, since I must serve, and since, 
at this critical moment, my only service must 
take the form of a choice between loyalties, 
I shall choose, even in my ignorance, what form 
my service is henceforth to take. The point 
where I am to make this choice is determined 
by the obvious fact that, after a certain waiting 
to find out whatever I can find out, I always 
reach the moment when further indecision 
would of itself constitute a sort of decision, — « 
a decision, namely, to do nothing, and so not 
to serve at all. Such a decision to do nothing, 
my loyalty to loyalty forbids; and therefore 
my principle clearly says to me after a fair 
consideration of the case: Decide, knowingly 
if you can, ignorantly if you must, but in any 
case decide, and have no fear. 

The duty of decisiveness as to one's loyalty 
is thus founded upon considerations analogous 
to those which Professor James has emphasized, 
in speaking of certain problems about belief 
in his justly famous essay on the Will to Be- 

189 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



lieve. As soon as further indecision would 
itself practically amount to a decision to do 
nothing, — and so would mean a failure to be 
loyal to loyalty, — then at once decide. This 
is the only right act. If you cannot decide 
knowingly, put your own personal will into the 
matter, and thereupon decide ignorantly. For 
ignorant service, which still knows itself as a 
willing attempt to serve the cause of universal 
loyalty, is better than a knowing refusal to 
undertake any service whatever. The duty to 
decide is, in such cases, just that upon which 
our principle insists. 

Decision, however, is meaningless unless it 
is to be followed up by persistently active 
loyalty. Having surrendered the self to the 
chosen special cause, loyalty, precisely as 
loyalty to loyalty, forbids you to destroy the 
unity of your own purposes, and to set the 
model of disloyalty before your fellows, by 
turning back from the cause once chosen, unless 
indeed later growth in knowledge makes mani- 
fest that further service of that special cause 
would henceforth involve unquestionable dis- 

190 



CONSCIENCE 



loyalty to universal loyalty. Fidelity to the 
cause once chosen is as obvious an aspect of a 
thorough devotion of the self to the cause of 
universal loyalty, as is decisiveness. 

Only a growth in knowledge which makes it 
evident that the special cause once chosen is an 
unworthy cause, disloyal to universal loyalty, — 
only such a growth in knowledge can absolve 
from fidelity to the cause once chosen. In 
brief, the choice of a special personal cause is 
a sort of ethical marriage to this cause, with the 
exception that the duty to choose some personal 
cause is a duty for everybody, while marriage 
is not everybody's duty. The marriage to 
your cause is not to be dissolved unless it 
becomes unquestionably evident that the con- 
tinuance of this marriage involves positive 
unfaithfulness to the cause of universal loyalty. 
But like any other marriage, the marriage of 
each self to its chosen personal cause is made 
in ignorance of the consequences. Decide, 
then, in the critical case, and, "forsaking all 
others, cleave to your own cause. " Thus only 
can you be loyal to loyalty. 

191 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

If you once view the matter in this way, you 
will not suppose that our principle would leave 
either the future General Lee or our sup- 
posed young professional woman without guid- 
ance. It would say : Look first at the whole 
situation. Consider it carefully. See, if pos- 
sible, whether you can predict the consequences 
to the general loyalty which your act will in- 
volve. If, after such consideration, you still 
remain ignorant of decisive facts, then look to 
your highest loyalty; look steadfastly at the 
cause of universal loyalty itself. Remember 
how the loyal have always borne themselves. 
Then, with your eyes and your voice put as 
completely as may be at the service of that 
cause, arouse all the loyal interests of your own 
self, just as they now are, to their fullest vigor ; 
and hereupon firmly and freely decide. Hence- 
forth, with all your mind and soul and strength 
belong, fearlessly and faithfully, to the chosen 
personal cause until the issue is decided, or 
until you positively know that this cause can 
no longer be served without disloyalty. So act, 
and you are morally right. 

192 



CONSCIENCE 



Now, that is how Lee acted. And that, too, 
is how all the loyal of our own Northern armies 
acted. And to-day we know how there was 
indeed loyalty to loyalty upon both sides, 
and how all those thus loyal actually served 
the one cause of the now united nation. They 
loyally shed their blood, North and South, 
that we might be free from their burden of 
hatred and of horror. Precisely so should the 
young woman of our ideal instance choose. 
It is utterly vain for another to tell her which 
she ought to choose, — her profession or her 
family. But it would be equally vain, and an 
insult to loyalty, lightly to say to her : Do as 
you please. One can say to her: Either of 
these lives, — the life of the successful servant 
of a profession, or the life of the devoted sister 
or aunt, — either, if loyally lived, is indeed a 
whole life. Nobody ought to ask for a more 
blessed lot than is either of these lives, — how- 
ever obscure the household drudgery of the 
one may be, however hard beset by cares the 
worldly success of the other may prove, or 
however toilsome either of them in prospect is, 

o 193 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



so long as either is faithfully lived out in 
full devotion. For nobody has anything better 
than loyalty, or can get anything better. But 
one of them alone can you live. No mortal 
knows which is the better for your world. 
With all your heart, in the name of universal 
loyalty, choose. And then be faithful to the 
choice. So shall it be morally well with 
you. 

Now, if this view of the application of our 
precept is right, you see how our principle is 
just to that mysterious and personal aspect of 
conscience upon which common sense insists. 
Such a loval choice as I have described de- 
mands, of course, one's will, — one's conscious 
decisiveness. It also calls out all of one's 
personal and more or less unconsciously pres- 
ent instincts, interests, affections, one's socially 
formed habits, and whatever else is woven into 
the unity of each individual self. Loyalty, 
as we have all along seen, is a willing devotion. 
Since it is willing, it involves conscious choice. 
Since it is devotion, it involves all the mystery 
of finding out that some cause awakens us, 

194 



CONSCIENCE 



fascinates us, reverberates through our whole 
being, possesses us. It is a fact that critical 
decisions as to the direction of our loyalty 
can be determined by our own choice. It is 
also a fact that loyalty involves more than mere 
conscious choice. It involves that response of 
our entire nature, conscious and unconscious, 
which makes loyalty so precious. Now, this 
response of the whole nature of the self, when 
the result is a moral decision, is what common 
sense has in mind when it views our moral de- 
cisions as due to our conscience, but our con- 
science as a mysterious higher or deeper self. 

As a fact, the conscience is the ideal of the 
self, coming to consciousness as a present com- 
mand. It says, Be loyal. If one asks, Loyal 
to what? the conscience, awakened by our 
whole personal response to the need of man- 
kind replies, Be loyal to loyalty. If, hereupon, 
various loyalties seem to conflict, the conscience 
says: Decide. If one asks, How decide? 
conscience further urges, Decide as I, your 
conscience, the ideal expression of your whole 
personal nature, conscious and unconscious, 

195 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

find best. If one persists, But you and I may 
be wrong, the last word of conscience is, 
We are fallible, but we can be decisive and faith- 
ful; and this is loyalty. 



196 



V 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS IN THEIR 
RELATION TO LOYALTY 



LECTURE V 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS IN THEIR 
RELATION TO LOYALTY 

IN the philosophy of loyalty, whose general 
statement has been contained in the fore- 
going lectures, I have made an effort to recon- 
cile the conception of loyalty with that of a 
rational and moral individualism. To every 
ethical individualist I have said: In loyalty 
alone is the fulfilment of the reasonable pur- 
poses of your individualism. If you want 
true freedom, seek it in loyalty. If you want 
self-expression, spirituality, moral autonomy, 
loyalty alone can give you these goods. But 
equally I have insisted upon interpreting loyalty 
in terms that emphasize the significance of the 
individual choice of that personal cause to 
which one is to be loyal. This evening, as 
I approach the application of our philosophy 
of loyalty to some well-known American prob- 

199 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



lems, it is important for us to bear in mind 
from the outset this synthesis of individualism 
and loyalty which constitutes our whole ethical 
doctrine. 

I 

The traditional view of loyalty has associated 
the term, in the minds of most of you, with 
moral situations in which some external social 
power predetermines for the individual, with- 
out his consent, all the causes to which he 
ought to be loyal. Loyalty so conceived ap- 
pears to be opposed to individual liberty. 
But in our philosophy of loyalty there is only 
one cause which is rationally and absolutely 
determined for the individual as the right cause 
for him as for everybody, — this is the general 
cause defined by the phrase loyalty to loyalty. 
The way in which any one man is to show his 
loyalty to loyalty is, however, in our phi- 
losophy of loyalty, something which varies end- 
lessly with the individual, and which can never 
be precisely defined except by and through his 
personal consent. I can be loyal to loyalty 
only in my own fashion, and by serving my 

200 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS 



own special personal system of causes. How 
wide a range of moral freedom of conscience 
this fact gives me, we began at the last time 
to see. In order to make that fact still clearer, 
let me sum up our moral code afresh, and in 
another order than the one used at the last 
time. 

As our philosophy of loyalty states the case, 
the moral law is: (1) be loyal; (2) to that 
end have a special cause or a system of 
causes which shall constitute your personal 
object of loyalty, your business in life; (3) 
choose this cause, in the first place, for your- 
self, but decisively, and so far as the general 
principle of loyalty permits, remain faithful 
to this chosen cause, until the work that you 
can do for it is done; and (4) the general 
principle of loyalty to which all special choices 
of one's cause are subject, is the principle: 
Be loyal to loyalty, that is, do what you can 
to produce a maximum of the devoted ser- 
vice of causes, a maximum of fidelity, and of 
selves that choose and serve fitting objects of 
loyalty. 

201 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



From the point of view of this statement of 
the moral law, we are all in the wrong in case 
we have no cause whatever to which we are 
loyal. If you are an individualist in the sense 
that you are loyal to nothing, you are certainly 
false to your duty. Furthermore, in order 
that you should be loyal at all, the cause to 
which you are loyal must involve the union of 
various persons by means of some social tie, 
which has in some respects an impersonal or 
superindividual character, as well as a distinct 
personal interest for each of the persons con- 
cerned. 

On the other hand, my statement of the 
moral principle gives to us all an extremely 
limited right to judge what the causes are to 
which any one of our neighbors ought to devote 
himself. Having defined loyalty as I have 
done as a devotion to a cause, outside the pri- 
vate self, and yet chosen by this individual 
self as his cause; having pointed out the 
general nature which such a cause must possess 
in order to be worthy, — namely, having shown 
that it must involve the mentioned union of 

202 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

personal and impersonal interests; having, 
furthermore, asserted that all rightly chosen 
loyalty is guided by the intent not to enter into 
any unnecessary destruction of the loyalty of 
others, but is inspired by loyalty to loyalty, 
and so seeks, as best the loyal individual can, 
to further loyalty as a common good for all 
mankind, — having said so much, I must, from 
my point of view, leave to the individual the 
decision as to the choice of the cause or causes 
to which he is loyal, subject only to these 
mentioned conditions. I have very little right 
to judge, except by the most unmistakable 
expression of my fellow's purpose, whether he 
is actually loyal, in the sense of my definition, 
or not. 

I may say of a given person that I do not 
understand to what cause he is loyal. But I 
can assert that he is disloyal only when I know 
what cause it is to which he has committed 
himself, and what it is that he has done to be 
false to his chosen fidelity. Or again, I can 
judge that he lacks loyalty if he makes it per- 
fectly evident by his acts or by his own con- 

203 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

fessions that he has chosen no cause at all. 
If he is unquestionably loyal to something, to 
his country or to his profession or to his 
family, I may criticise his expression of loyalty, 
in so far as I clearly see that it involves him in 
unnecessary assault upon the loyalty of others, 
or upon their means to be loyal. Thus, all 
unnecessary personal aggression upon what we 
commonly call the rights of other individuals 
are excluded by my formula, simply because 
in case I deprive my fellow of his property, 
his life, or his physical integrity, I take away 
from him the only means whereby he can ex- 
press in a practical way whatever loyalty he 
has. Hence such aggression, unless necessary, 
involves disloyalty to the general loyalty of 
mankind, is a crime against humanity at large, 
and is inconsistent with any form of loyalty. 
Such is the range of judgment that we have a 
right to use in our moral estimates of other 
people. The range thus indicated is, as I 
have insisted, large enough to enable us to 
define all rationally defensible special prin- 
ciples regarding right and wrong acts. Mur- 

204 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS 



der, lying, evil speaking, unkindness, are 
from this point of view simply forms of dis- 
loyalty. 

But my right to judge the choices of my 
fellow is thus very sharply limited. I cannot 
say that he is disloyal because his personal 
cause is not my cause, or because I have no 
sympathy with the objects to which he devotes 
himself. I have no right to call him disloyal 
because I should find that if I were to do what 
he does, I should indeed be disloyal to causes 
that I accept. I may not judge a man to be 
without an object of loyalty merely because 
I do not understand what the object is with 
which he busies himself. I may regard his 
cause as too narrow, if I clearly see that he 
could do better service than he does to the 
cause of universal loyalty. But when I ob- 
serve how much even the plainest and humblest 
of the loyal sometimes unconsciously do to help 
others to profit by the contagion of their own 
loyalty, by the example of their faithfulness, 
I must be cautious about judging another 
man's cause to be too narrow. You cannot 

205 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



easily set limits to the occupations that the sin- 
cere choice of somebody will make expressions 
of genuine loyalty. The loyal individual may 
live largely alone; or mainly in company. His 
life may be spent in the office or in the study 
or in the workshop or in the field; in arctic 
exploration, in philanthropy, in a laboratory. 
And yet the true form and spirit of loyalty, 
and of loyalty to loyalty, when once you get 
an actual understanding of the purposes of the 
self that is in question, is universal and un- 
mistakable. 

I hesitate, therefore, to decide for another 
person even such a question as the way in which 
his most natural and obvious opportunities 
for loyalty shall be used. It is true that nature 
furnishes to us all opportunities for loyalty 
which it seems absurd to neglect. Charity, 
as they say, begins at home. Still more obvi- 
ously does loyalty naturally begin at home. 
People who wholly neglect their natural family 
ties often thereby make probable that they are 
disloyal people. Yet the well-known word 
about hating father and mother in the service 

206 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

of a universal cause paradoxically states a 
possibility to which the history of the early 
Christian martyrs more than once gave an 
actual embodiment. If the martyr might 
break loose from all family ties in his loyal ser- 
vice of his faith, one cannot attempt to deter- 
mine for another person at just what point the 
neglect of a naturally present opportunity for 
loyalty becomes an inevitable incident of the 
choice of loyalty that one has made. Nature, 
after all, furnishes us merely our opportuni- 
ties to be loyal. Some of these must be used. 
None of them may be so ignored that thereby 
we deliberately increase the disloyalty of 
mankind. But the individual retains the 
inalienable duty, which nobody, not even his 
most pious critical neighbor, can either perform 
or wholly judge for him, — the duty to decide 
wherein his own loyalty lies. Yet the duty to 
be loyal to loyalty is absolutely universal and 
rigid. 

As we also saw at the last time, since fidelity 
and loyalty are indeed inseparable, the break- 
ing of the once plighted faith is always a dis- 

207 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



loyal act, unless the discovery that the original 
undertaking involves one in disloyalty to the 
general cause of loyalty requires the change. 
Thus, indeed, the once awakened and so far 
loyal member of the robber band would be 
bound by his newly discovered loyalty to hu- 
manity in general, to break his oath to the 
band. But even in such a case, he would still 
owe to his comrades of the former service a 
kind of fidelity which he would not have owed 
had he never been a member of the band. His 
duty to his former comrades would change 
through his new insight. But he could never 
ignore his former loyalty, and would never be 
absolved from the peculiar obligation to his 
former comrades, — the obligation to help them 
all to a higher service of humanity than they 
had so far attained. 

You see, from this point of view, how the 
requirements of the spirit of loyalty are in one 
sense perfectly stern and unyielding, while 
in another sense they are and must be capable 
of great freedom of interpretation. In judg- 
ing myself, in deciding how I can best be loyal 

208 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS 



to loyalty, in deciding what special causes they 
are through which I am to express my loyalty, 
in judging whether my act is justified by my 
loyalty, — in all these respects I must be with 
myself, at least in principle, entirely rigid. As 
I grow in knowledge, I shall better learn how 
to be loyal. I shall learn to serve new causes, 
to recover from vain attempts at a service of 
which I was incapable, and in general to be- 
come a better servant of the cause. But at 
each point of my choice my obligation to be 
loyal, to have a cause, to have for the purposes 
of voluntary conduct no eyes and ears and voice 
save as this cause directs, — this obligation is 
absolute. I cannot excuse myself from it with- 
out being false to my own purpose. I may 
sleep or be slothful, but precisely in so far as 
such relaxation fits me for work. I may 
amuse myself, but because amusement is 
again a necessary preliminary to or accompani- 
ment of loyal service. I may seek my private 
advantage, but only in so far as, since I am an 
instrument of my cause, it is indeed my duty, 
and is consistent with my loyalty, to furnish to 
p 209 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



the cause an effective instrument. But the 
general principle remains: Working or idle, 
asleep or awake, joyous or sorrowful, thoughtful 
or apparently careless, at critical moments, or 
when engaged in the most mechanical routine, 
in so far as my will can determine what I am, 
I must be whatever my loyalty requires me to 
be. And in so far my voluntary life is from 
my point of view a topic for judgments which 
are in principle perfectly determinate. 

Profoundly different must be my judgment 
in case of my estimate of the loyalty of my 
fellow. The tasks of mankind are not only 
common but also individual. So long as you 
are sure of your own loyalty, and do not break 
your trust, I cannot judge that you are actually 
disloyal. I can only judge in some respects 
whether your loyalty is or is not enlightened, 
is or is not successful, is or is not in unneces- 
sary conflict with the loyalty of others. I have 
to be extremely wary of deciding what the 
loyalty of others demands of them. But this 
I certainly know, that if a man has made no 
choice for himself of the cause that he serves, 

210 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS 



he is not vet come to his rational self, he has 
not yet found his business as a moral agent. 

II 

Such are our general results regarding the 
nature of loyalty as an ethical principle. This 
complete synthesis of loyalty with a rational 
individualism must be borne in mind as 
we attempt a certain practical application of 
these principles to the problem of our present 
American life. If there is any truth in the 
foregoing, then our concept especially helps 
us in trying to define what it is that we most 
need in the social life of a democracy, and what 
means we have of doing something to satisfy 
the moral needs of our American community, 
while leaving the liberties of the people intact. 

Liberty without loyalty — of what worth, if 
the foregoing principles are sound, could such 
liberty be to any people? And yet, if you 
recall the protest of my young friend, the Rus- 
sian immigrant's son, as cited to you in a for- 
mer lecture, you will be reminded of the great 
task that now lies before our American people, 

211 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



— the task of teaching millions of foreign birth 
and descent to understand and to bear con- 
stantly in mind the value of loyalty, the 
task also of keeping our own loyalty intact 
in the presence of those enormous complica- 
tions of social life which the vastness of our 
country, and the numbers of our foreign immi- 
grants are constantly increasing. The prob- 
lem here in question is not merely the problem 
of giving instruction in the duties of citizenship 
to those to whom our country is new, nor yet of 
awakening and preserving patriotism. It is the 
problem of keeping alive what we now know 
to be the central principle of the moral life in 
a population which is constantly being altered 
by new arrivals, and unsettled by great social 
changes. 

If you recall what was said in our former 
lecture regarding modern individualism in 
general, you will also see that our American 
immigration problem is only one aspect of a 
world-wide need of moral enlightenment, — ■ 
a need characteristic of our time. One is 
tempted to adapt Lincoln's great words, and 

212 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS 



to say that in all nations, but particularly in 
America, we need in this day to work together 
to the end that loyalty of the people, by the 
people, and for the people shall not perish from 
the earth. 

It is not, indeed, that loyal people no longer 
are frequent amongst us. The faithful who 
live and die in loyalty so far as they know 
loyalty are indeed not yet uncommon. The 
loyalty of the common people is precisely the 
most precious moral treasure of our world. 
But the moral dangers of our American civil- 
ization are twofold. First, loyalty is not suf- 
ficiently prominent amongst our explicit social 
ideals in America. It is too much left to the 
true-hearted obscure people. It is not suffi- 
ciently emphasized. Our popular literature 
too often ignores it or misrepresents it. This 
is one danger, since it means that loyalty is too 
often discouraged and confused, instead of 
glorified and honored. In the long run, if not 
checked, this tendency must lead to a great 
decrease of loyalty. The second danger lies in 
the fact that when loyalty is indeed emphasized 

213 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

and glorified, it is then far too seldom conceived 
as rationally involving loyalty to universal loy- 
alty. Hence we all think too often of loyalty 
as a warlike and intolerant virtue, and not as 
the spirit of universal peace. Enlightened loy- 
altv, as we have now learned, means harm to no 
man's loyalty. It is at war only with disloy- 
alty, and its warfare, unless necessity con- 
strains, is only a spiritual warfare. It does 
not foster class hatreds ; it knows of nothing 
reasonable about race prejudices, and it regards 
all races of men as one in their need of loyalty. 
It ignores mutual misunderstandings. It loves 
its own wherever upon earth its own, namely, 
loyalty itself, is to be found. Enlightened loy- 
alty takes no delight in great armies or in great 
navies for their own sake. If it consents to 
them, it views them merely as transiently nec- 
essary calamities. It has no joy in national 
prowess, except in so far as that prowess means 
a furtherance of universal loyalty. And it re- 
gards the war-spirit, which in our first lecture 
we used as an example of loyalty, — it regards 
this spirit, I say, as at its best an outcome of 

214 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS 



necessity or else of unenlightened loyalty, and 
as at its worst one of the basest of disloyalties 
to universal loyalty. 

Now, it is precisely this enlightened form of 
loyalty, this conception of loyalty to loyalty, 
which we most need to have taught to our 
American people, — taught openly, explicitly, 
— yet not taught, for the most part, by the 
now too familiar method of fascinating denun- 
ciations of the wicked, nor by the mere display 
of force, social or political, nor by the setting 
of class against class, nor yet by any glorifica- 
tion of mere power, nor by appeals merely to 
patriotic but confused fervor. We want loyalty 
to loyalty taught by helping many people to be 
loyal to their own special causes, and by show- 
ing them that loyalty is a precious common 
human good, and that it can never be a good 
to harm any man's loyalty except solely in 
necessary defence of our own loyalty 

III 

From the point of view of the foregoing dis- 
cussion, if you want to do the best you can to 

215 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



teach loyalty, not now to single individuals, but 
to great masses of people, — masses such as our 
whole nation, — you should do three things: 
(1) You should aid them to possess and to keep 
those physical and mental powers and posses- 
sions which are the necessary conditions for 
the exercise of loyalty. (2) You should pro- 
vide them with manifold opportunities to be 
loyal, that is, with a maximum of significant, 
rational enterprises, such as can be loyally 
carried out; you should, if possible, secure 
for them a minimum of the conditions that 
lead to the conflicts of various forms of loyalty ; 
and you should furnish them a variety of oppor- 
tunities to get social experience of the value of 
loyalty. (3) You should explicitly show them 
that loyalty is the best of human goods, and 
that loyalty to loyalty is the crown and the real 
meaning of all loyalty. 

Helping the people to the attainment and 
preservation of their powers obviously involves 
the sort of care of public health, the sort of 
general training of intelligence, the sort of 
protection and assistance, which our philan- 

216 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

thropists and teachers and public-spirited peo- 
ple generally regard as important. There is 
no doubt that in our modern American life our 
social order does give to great numbers of 
people care and assistance and protection, 
such as earlier stages of civilization lacked. 
But the other side of the task of providing 
our people with the means of ethical advance- 
ment, the side that has to do with letting them 
know what loyalty is, and with giving them 
opportunities to be loyal, this side, I say, of 
what we ought to do to further the moral prog- 
ress of our people, is at present very imper- 
fectly accomplished. 

With prosperity, as we may well admit, sym- 
pathy, benevolence, public spirit, even the 
more rational philanthropy which seeks not 
merely to relieve suffering, but to improve the 
effective powers of those whom we try to help, 
— all these things have become, in recent 
decades, more and more prominent on the 
better side of our civilization. And yet I 
insist, just as prosperity is not virtue, and just 
as power is not morality, so too even public 

217 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



charity, and even the disposition to train peo- 
ple, to make them more intelligent, to give 
them new power, all such dispositions are in- 
sufficient to insure the right moral training of 
our people, or the effective furtherance of ideal 
life amongst them. 

What men need involves opportunity for 
loyalty. And such opportunity they get, espe- 
cially through the suggestion of objects to 
which they can be loyal. If you want to train 
a man to a good life, you must indeed do what 
you can to give him health and power. And 
you do something for him when, by example 
and by precept, you encourage him to be sym- 
pathetic, public-spirited, amiable, or industri- 
ous. But benevolence, sympathy, what some 
people love to call altruism, — these are all mere 
fragments of goodness, mere aspects of the 
dutiful life. What is needed is loyalty. Mean- 
while, since loyalty is so plastic a virtue, since 
the choice of the objects of loyalty must vary so 
widely from individual to individual, and since, 
above all, you can never force anybody to be 
loyal, but can only show him opportunities 

218 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS 



for loyalty, and teach him by example and pre- 
cept what loyalty is, the great need of any 
higher civilization is a vast variety of oppor- 
tunities for individual loyalty, and of sugges- 
tion regarding what forms of loyalty are possi- 
ble. 

Now, I need not for a moment ignore the 
fact that every higher civilization, and of course 
our own, presents to any intelligent person nu- 
merous opportunities to be loyal. But what 
I must point out in our present American life is, 
that our opportunities for loyalty are not 
rightly brought to our consciousness by the 
conditions of our civilization, so that a great 
mass of our people are far too little reminded 
of what chances for loyalty they themselves 
have, or of what loyalty is. Meanwhile our 
national prosperity and our national greatness 
involve us all in many new temptations to 
disloyalty, and distract our minds too much 
from dwelling upon the loyal side of life; so 
that at the very moment when our philanthropy 
is growing, when our sympathies are con- 
stantly aroused through the press, the drama, 

219 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



and our sensitive social life generally, our 
training in loyalty is falling away. Our young 
people grow up with a great deal of their 
attention fixed upon personal success, and also 
with a great deal of training in sympathetic 
sentiments ; but they get far too little knowl- 
edge, either practical or theoretical, of what 
loyalty means. 

IV 

The first natural opportunity for loyalty is 
furnished by family ties. We all know how 
some of the conditions of our civilization tend 
with great masses of our population to a new 
interpretation of family ties in which family 
loyalty often plays a much less part than it 
formerly did in family life. Since our mod- 
ern family is less patriarchal than it used to be, 
our children, trained in an individualistic 
spirit, frequently make little of certain duties 
to their parents which the ancient family re- 
garded as imperative and exalted as ideal. 
Many of us deliberately prefer the loss of cer- 
tain results of the patriarchal family tie, and 

220 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS 



are glad that in the modern American family 
the parental decisions regarding the marriage 
choices of children are so much less decisive 
than they used to be. Many insist that other 
weakenings of the family tie, such as divorce 
legislation and the practice of divorce have 
involved, are in the direction of a reasonable 
recognition of individual interests. 

I will not trv to discuss these matters at 
length. But this I can say without hesitation : 
The family ties, so far as they are natural, 
are opportunities for loyalty; so far as they 
are deliberately chosen or recognized, are in- 
stances of the choice of a loyalty. From our 
point of view, therefore, they must be judged as 
all other opportunities and forms of loyalty are 
judged. That such opportunities and forms 
alter their character as civilization changes is 
inevitable, and need be no matter for super- 
stitious cares regarding whatever was arbitrary 
in traditional views of family authority. But, 
after all, fidelity and family devotion are 
amongst the most precious opportunities and 
instances of loyalty. Faithlessness can never 

221 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



become a virtue, however your traditions about 
the forms of faithfulness may vary in their 
external details. Whoever deliberately breaks 
the tie to which he is devoted loses the oppor- 
tunity and the position of the loyal self, and in 
so far loses the best sort of thing that there is in 
the moral world. No fondness for individual- 
ism will ever do away with this fact. We want 
more individuals and more rational individ- 
ualism ; but the only possible ethical use of an 
individual is to be loyal. He has no other 
destiny. 

When a man feels his present ties to be 
arbitrary or to be a mechanical bondage, he 
sometimes says that it is irrational to be a 
mere spoke in a wheel. Now, a loyal self is 
always more than a spoke in a wheel. But 
still, at the worst, it is better to be a spoke in 
the wheel than a spoke out of the wheel. And 
you never make ethical individuals, or enlarge 
their opportunities, merely by breaking ties. 
Hence, so far as a change in family tradition 
actually involves a loss of opportunities and 
forms of loyalty, which tradition used to 

222 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS 



emphasize, our new social order has lost a 
good thing. Do we see at present just what 
is taking its place ? If the patriarchal family 
must pass away or be profoundly altered, 
surely we should not gain thereby unless there 
were to result a new family type, as rich in 
appeal to our human affections and our do- 
mestic instincts as the old forms ever were. 

But in our present American life the family 
tie has been weakened, and yet no substitute 
has been found. We have so far lost certain 
opportunities for loyalty. 

Now, how shall we hope to win back these 
opportunities ? I answer : We can win back 
something of what we have lost if only we in this 
country can get before ourselves and our pub- 
lic a new, a transformed conception of what 
loyalty is. The loyalties of the past have lost 
their meaning for many people, simply because 
people have confounded loyalty with mere 
bondage to tradition, or with mere surrender 
of individual rights and preferences. Such 
people have forgotten that what has made 
loyalty a good has never been the convention 

223 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

which undertook to enforce it, but has always 
been the spiritual dignity which lies in being 
loyal. 

As to individual rights and preferences, no- 
body can ever attain either the one or the other, 
in full measure, apart from loyalty to the clos- 
est and the most lasting ties which the life of 
the individual in question is capable of accept- 
ing with hearty willingness. Ties once loyally 
accepted may be broken in case, but only in 
case, the further keeping of those ties intact 
involves disloyalty to the universal cause of 
loyalty. When such reason for breaking ties 
exists, to break them becomes a duty; and 
then, indeed, a merely conventional persist- 
ence in what has become a false position, is 
itself a disloyal deed. But ties may never be 
broken except for the sake of other and still 
stronger ties. No one may rationally say: 
"Loyalty can no longer bind me, because, 
from my deepest soul, I feel that I want my 
individual freedom." For any such outcry 
comes from an ignorance of what one's deep- 
est soul really wants. 

224 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS 



Disloyalty is moral suicide. Many a poor 
human creature outlives all that, in the present 
life, can constitute his true self, — outlives as 
a mere psychological specimen any human 
expression of his moral personality, and does 
so because he has failed to observe that his 
loyalty, so far and so long as it has been his own, 
has been the very heart of this moral personality. 
When loyalty has once been fully aroused, 
and has then not merely blundered but died, 
there may, indeed, remain much fluttering 
eagerness of life; as if a stranded ship's torn 
canvas were still flapping in the wind. But 
there cannot remain freedom of personal exist- 
ence. For the moral personality that once 
was loyal, and that then blindly sought free- 
dom, is, to human vision, dead. What is, in 
such a case, left of the so-called life is merely 
an obituary. Curious people of prominence 
have sometimes expressed a wish to read their 
own obituaries. But it is hardly worth while 
to live them. 

People sometimes fail to observe this fact, 
partly because they conceive loyalty as some- 

q 225 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

thing which convention forces upon the indi- 
vidual, and partly because they also conceive 
loyalty, where it exists, as merely a relation 
of one individual to other individuals. Both 
views, as we now know, are wrong. No con- 
vention can predetermine my personal loyalty 
without my free consent. But then, if I 
loyally consent, I mean to be faithful ; I give 
myself; I am henceforth the self thus given 
over to the cause ; and therefore essential un- 
faithfulness is, for me, moral suicide. Mean- 
while, however, no mere individual can ever 
be my whole object of loyalty ; for to another 
individual human being I can only say, "So 
far as in me lies I will be loyal to our tie, to our 
cause, to our union" For this reason the 
loyal are never the mere slaves of convention ; 
and, on the other hand, they can never say 
one to another, "Since we have now grown 
more or less tired of one another, our loyalty 
ceases." To tire of the cause to which my 
whole self is once for all committed, is indeed 
to tire of being my moral self. I cannot win 
my freedom in that way. And no individual, 

226 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS 



as individual, ever has been, or ever can be, 
my whole cause. My cause has always been 
a tie, an union of various individuals in one. 

Now, can our American people learn this 
lesson in so far as this lesson is illustrated by 
family ties ? Can they come to see that loyalty 
does not mean the bondage of one individual 
to another, but does mean the exaltation of 
individuals to the rank of true personalities 
by virtue of their free acceptance of enduring 
causes, and by virtue of their lifelong service 
of their common personal ties ? If this lesson 
can be learned by those serious-minded peo- 
ple who have been misled, in recent times, 
by a false form of individualism, then we shall 
indeed not get rid of our moral problems, but 
we shall vastly simplify our moral situation. 
And a rational individualism will still remain 
our possession. How to treat the disloyal 
remains indeed a serious practical problem. 
But we shall never learn to deal with that 
problem if we suppose that the one cure for 
disloyalty, or the one revenge which we can 
take upon the disloyal, lies in a new act of 

227 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



disloyalty, that is, in the mere assertion of 
our individual freedom. Train our people 
to know the essential preciousness of loyalty. 
In that way only can you hope to restore to the 
family, not, indeed, all of its older conven- 
tional forms, but its true dignity. The prob- 
lem, then, of the salvation of the family life 
of our nation resolves itself into the general 
problem of how to train our people at large 
into loyalty to loyalty. 

V 

The second great opportunity for loyalty is 
furnished, to the great mass of our people, 
by their relations to our various political powers 
and institutions, and to our larger social or- 
ganizations generally. And here we meet, in 
the America of to-day, with many signs that 
our political and social life form at present a 
poor school in the arts of loyalty to loyalty. 

Loyalty, indeed, as I have repeatedly said, 
we still have present all about us. The pre- 
cious plain and obscure people, who are loyal 
to whatever they understand to be worthy 

228 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

causes, and, on the other hand, those promi- 
nent and voluntary public servants, who in so 
many cases are our leaders in good works, — 
these we have so far still with us. And new 
forms of loyalty constantly appear in our so- 
cial life. Reform movements, trades-unions, 
religious sects, partisan organizations, both good 
and evil, arouse in various ways the loyalty of 
great numbers of people. Yet these special 
loyalties do not get rightly organized in such 
form as to further loyalty to loyalty. Narrow 
loyalties, side by side with irrational forms 
of individualism and with a cynical contempt 
for all loyalty, — these are what we too often 
see in the life of our country. For where the 
special loyalties are, amongst our people, most 
developed, they far too often take the form of 
a loyalty to mutually hostile partisan organiza- 
tions, or to sects, or to social classes, at the 
expense of loyalty to the community or to the 
whole country. The labor-unions demand and 
cultivate the loyalty of their members; but 
they do so with a far too frequent emphasis 
upon the thesis that in order to be loyal to his 

229 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

own social class, or, in particular, to his union, 
the laborer must disregard certain duties to the 
community at large, and to the nation, — du- 
ties which loyalty to loyalty seems obviously 
to require. And party loyalty comes to be 
misused by corrupt politicians to the harm of 
the state. Therefore loyalty to special organi- 
zations such as labor-unions comes to be mis- 
directed by such leaders as are disloyal, until 
the welfare of the whole social order is en- 
dangered. 

The result is that the very spirit of loyalty 
itself has come to be regarded with suspicion 
by many of our social critics, and by many such 
partisans of ethical individualism as those whose 
various views we studied in our second lecture. 
Yet surely if such ethical individualists, ob- 
jecting to the mischiefs wrought by the cor- 
rupt politicians, or by the more unwise leaders 
of organized labor, imagine that loyalty is 
responsible for these evils, such critics have 
only to turn to the recent history of corporate 
misdeeds and of the unwise mismanagement 
of corporations in this country, in order to be 

230 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS 



reminded that what we want, at present, from 
some of the managers of great corporate inter- 
ests is more loyalty, and less of the individual- 
ism of those who seek power. And I myself 
should say that precisely the same sort of 
loyalty is what we want both from the leaders 
and from the followers of organized labor. 
There is here one law for all. 

Meanwhile, in case of the ill-advised labor 
agitations, and of the corrupt party manage- 
ment, the cure, if it ever comes, surely will 
include cultivating amongst our people the 
spirit of loyalty to loyalty. Loyalty in itself 
is never an evil. The arbitrary interference 
with other men's loyalties, the disloyalty to 
the universal cause of loyalty, is what does 
the mischief here in question. The more the 
laborer is loyal to his union, if only he learns 
to conceive this loyalty as an instance of 
loyalty to loyalty, the more likely is his union 
to become, in the end, an instrument for social 
harmony, and not, as is now too often the case, 
an influence for oppression and for social dis- 
organization. The loyalty which the trades- 

231 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

unions demand of their members is at present 
too often viewed as a mere class loyalty, and 
also as opposed to the individual freedom of 
choice on the part of those laborers who do not 
belong to a given union, or even to those who 
are in the union, but whose right choice and 
interests are sometimes hindered by their own 
union itself. But our people must learn that 
loyalty does not mean hostility to another 
man's loyalty. Loyalty is for all men, kings 
and laborers alike ; and whenever we learn to 
recognize that fact, loyalty will no longer mean 
fraternal strife, and will no longer excuse 
treason to the country for the sake of fidelity 
to corrupt leaders or to mischievous agita- 
tions. 

VI 

But you may hereupon ask how the masses 
of our people are to learn such a lesson of 
loyalty to loyalty. I admit that the problem 
of teaching our people what the larger loyalty 
means is at present peculiarly difficult. And 
it is rendered all the more difficult by the fact 

232 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

that, for us Americans, loyalty to our nation, 
as a whole, is a sentiment that we find to be at 
present by no means as prominent in the minds 
of our people as such sentiments have been in 
the past in other nations. Let me explain 
what I mean by this assertion. 

The history of our sentiment towards our 
national government is somewhat different from 
the history of the sentiment of patriotism in 
other countries. We have never had a king as 
the symbol of our national dignity and unity. 
We have, on the other hand, never had to war 
against a privileged class. Our constitutional 
problem which led to the Civil War was a 
different problem from that which the French 
Revolution, or the English political wars of the 
seventeenth century, have exemplified. At 
one time loyalty to the nation stood, in the 
minds of many of our people, in strong contrast 
to their loyalty to their state, or to their section 
of the country. This contrast led in many 
cases to a bitter conflict between the two sorts 
of loyal interests. At last such conflicts had 
to be decided by war. The result of the war 

233 

I 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

was such that, from one point of view, the 
national government and the authority of the 
nation, as a whole, have won a position that 
is at present politically unquestionable. The 
supremacy of the national government in its 
own sphere is well recognized. Within its 
legal limits, its power is popularly regarded 
as irresistible. The appearance of its soldiers 
at any moment of popular tumult is well known 
to be the most effective expression of public 
authority which we have at our disposal, even 
although the body of soldiers which may be 
accessible for such a show of force happens to 
be a very small body. Viewed, then, as a legal 
authority and as a physical force, our national 
government occupies at present a peculiarly 
secure position. And so, the President of 
the United States is, at any moment, more 
powerful than almost any living monarch. All 
this, viewed as the outcome of our long con- 
stitutional struggle, would seem of itself to sug- 
gest that the American people have become 
essentially loyal to our national government. 
But, nevertheless, is this quite true? I 

234 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS 



think that almost any thoughtful American has 
to admit that in time of peace we do not regard 
our national government with any such intense 
sentiments of loyalty as would seem from report 
to be the living, the vital, the constant posses- 
sion of Japanese patriots when they consider 
their traditional devotion to the nation and to 
their emperor. For them their country is 
part of a religion. In their consciousness it is 
said especially to be the land sacred to the 
memory of their dead. The living, as they 
say, are but of to-day. The dead they have 
always with them in memory, even if not in the 
determinate form of any fixed belief with re- 
gard to the precise nature of the life beyond 
the grave. It is said that the Japanese are 
very free as to the formulation of all their 
religious opinions. But in any case their 
religion includes a reverence for the historic 
past, a devotion to the dead whose memory 
makes their country sacred, and a present 
loyalty which is consciously determined by 
these religious motives. 

Now, the most patriotic American can hardly 

235 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

pretend that he consciously views his country, 
taken as a whole, in any such religious way. 
The country is to us an unquestionable political 
authority. Were it in danger, we should rally 
to its defence. We have a good many formal 
phrases of reverence for its history and for its 
dignity, — phrases which had a much more 
concrete meaning for our predecessors, when 
the country was smaller, or when the country 
was in greater danger from its foes. But, at 
present, is not our national loyalty somewhat 
in the background of our practical conscious- 
ness? Are we really at present a highly 
patriotic people? Certainly, the observer of 
a presidential canvass can hardly think of that 
canvass as a religious function, or believe that 
a profound reverence for the sacred memory 
of the fathers is at present a very prominent 
factor in determining our choice of the party 
for which we shall vote at the polls. 

And if you say that political dissensions are 
always of such a nature as to hide for the 
moment patriotism behind a mist of present 
perplexities, you may well be asked in reply 

236 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

whether anywhere else, outside of political 
dissensions, we have in our national life func- 
tions, ceremonies, expressions of practical de- 
votion to our nation as an ideal, which serve 
to keep our loyalty to our country sufficiently 
alive, and sufficiently a factor in our lives. 
When can the ordinary American citizen 
say in time of peace that he performs notable 
acts of devotion to his country, such that he 
could describe those acts in the terms that the 
Speaker of the House of Commons used, in 
the story that I reported to you in my former 
lecture? In other words, how often, in your 
own present life, or in the lives of your fellow- 
citizens, as now you know them, is it the case 
that you do something critical, significant, in- 
volving personal risk or sacrifice to yourself, 
and something which is meanwhile so inspired 
by your love of your nation as a whole that 
you can say that just then you have neither 
eyes to see nor tongue to speak save as the 
country itself, in your opinion, requires you 
to see and to speak ? 

Now, all this state of things is opposed to 

237 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

our easily forming a conception of what 
loyalty to loyalty demands of us in our social 
and political relations. But the faults in 
question are not peculiar to our American 
people. They seem to my mind to be merely 
symptomatic of something which naturally be- 
longs to the general type of civilization upon 
which, in our national history, we are entering. 
The philosopher Hegel, in one of his works 
on the philosophy of history, depicts a type 
of civilization, which, in his mind, was espe- 
cially associated with the decline and fall of 
the Roman Empire, as well as with the polit- 
ical absolutism of the seventeenth and of the 
early eighteenth centuries in modern Europe. 
This type itself was conceived by him as a 
general one, such that it might be realized in 
very various ages and civilizations. Hegel 
called this type of social consciousness the 
type of the social mind, or of the "Spirit/' 
that had become, as he said, "estranged 
from itself/' Let me explain what Hegel 
meant by this phrase. 

A social consciousness can be of the pro- 

238 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

vincial type; that is, of the type which be- 
longs to small commonwealths or to provinces, 
such as our own thirteen colonies once were. 
Or, on the other hand, the social life can be that 
of the great nation, which is so vast that the 
individuals concerned no longer recognize 
their social unity in ways which seem to them 
homelike. In the province the social mind is 
naturally aware of itself as at home with its 
own. In the Roman Empire, or in the state 
of Louis XIV, nobody is at home. The gov- 
ernment in such vast social orders represents 
the law, a dictation that the individual finds 
relatively strange to himself. Or, again, the 
power of the state, even when it is attractive 
to the individual, still seems to him like a 
great nature force, rather than like his own 
loyal self, writ large. The world of the 
" self -estranged social mind " of Hegel's defi- 
nition we might, to use a current phrase- 
ology, characterize as the world of the impe- 
rialistic sort of national consciousness, or 
simply as the world of imperialism. In such 
a world, as Hegel skilfully points out, the 

239 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

individual comes to regard himself as in rela- 
tion to the social powers, which, in the first 
place, he cannot understand. The fact that, 
as in our present civilization, he is formally a 
free citizen, does not remove his character of 
self -estrangement from the social world in 
which he moves. Furthermore, since such 
a society is so vast as to be no longer easily 
intelligible, not only its political, but also its 
other social powers, appear to the individual 
in a similarly estranged and arbitrary fashion. 
In Hegel's account stress is laid upon the in- 
evitable conflicts between wealth and govern- 
mental authority, between corporate and polit- 
ical dignities, — conflicts which characterize 
the imperial stage of civilization in question. 
In the world of the " self -estranged social 
mind," loyalty passes into the background, 
or tends to disappear altogether. The in- 
dividual seeks his own. He submits to major 
force. Perhaps he finds such submission 
welcome, if it secures him safety in the acqui- 
sition of private gain, or of stately social posi- 
tion. But welcome or unwelcome, the author- 

240 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS 



ity to which he submits, be it the authority 
of the government or the authority which 
wealth and the great aggregations of capital 
imply, is for him just the fact, not a matter 
for loyalty. 

Such a formula as the one which Hegel 
suggests is always inadequate to the wealth of 
life. But we are able to understand our 
national position better when we see that our 
nation has entered in these days into the realm 
of the " self-estranged spirit," into the social 
realm where the distant and irresistible national 
government, however welcome its authority 
may be, is at best rather a guarantee of safety, 
an object for political contest, and a force 
with which everybody must reckon, than the 
opportunity for such loyalty, as our distinctly 
provincial fathers used to feel and express in 
their early utterances of the national spirit. 
In the same way in this world of the self- 
estranged spirit, the other forces of society 
arouse our curiosity, interest us intensely, 
must be reckoned with, and may be used more 
or less wisely to our advantage. But they are 

r 241 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

the great industrial forces, the aggregations 
of capital, the combinations of enormous 
physical power, employed for various social 
ends. These vast social forces are like the 
forces of nature. They excite our loyalty as 
little as do the trade-winds or the blizzard. 
They leave our patriotic sentiments cold. 
The smoke of our civilization hides the very 
heavens that used to be so near, and the stars 
to which we were once loyal. The conse- 
quences of such social conditions are in part 
inevitable. I am not planning any social 
reform which would wholly do away with 
these conditions of the world of the self- 
estranged spirit. But these conditions of our 
national social order do not make loyalty to 
loyalty a less significant need. They only 
deprive us of certain formerly accessible op- 
portunities for such loyalty. They lead us 
to take refuge in our unpatriotic sects, par- 
tisan organizations, and unions. But they 
make it necessary that we should try to see 
how, under conditions as they are, we can 
best foster loyalty in its higher forms, not by 

242 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS 



destroying the sects or the unions, but by 
inspiring them with a new loyalty to loyalty. 

As the nation has in so many respects be- 
come estranged from our more intimate con- 
sciousness, we have lost a portion of what, in 
the days before the war, used to absorb the 
loyalty of a large proportion of our country- 
men. I speak here of loyalty to the separate 
states and to the various provinces of our 
country. Such provincial loyalty still exists, 
but it has no longer the power that it possessed 
when it was able to bring on civil war, and 
very nearly to destroy the national unity. 
Instead of dangerous sectionalism, we now 
have the other dangerous tendency towards 
a war of classes, which the labor-unions and 
many other symptoms of social discontent em- 
phasize. We have that corrupt political life 
which partisan mismanagement exemplifies. 
And we have that total indifference to all forms 
of loyalty which our seekers after individual 
power sometimes exhibit, and which occasion- 
ally appears as so serious an evil in the conduct 
of the business of certain great corporations. 

243 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

All these, I insist, are in our present Ameri- 
can life symptoms of the state of the self- 
estranged spirit. The decline of family loy- 
alty, of which I spoke a while since, may be 
regarded as another symptom of the same 
general tendency. Loyalty itself, under such 
conditions, remains too often unconscious of 
its true office. Instead of developing into the 
true loyalty to loyalty, it fails to recognize its 
own in the vast world of national affairs. It 
is dazzled by the show of power. It limits its 
devotion to the service of the political party, 
or of the labor-union, or of some other sec- 
tarian social organization. In private life, as 
we have seen, it too often loses control of the 
family. In public life it appears either as the 
service of a faction, or as a vague fondness for 
the remote ideals. 

VII 

And nevertheless, as I insist, loyalty to 
loyalty is not a vague ideal. The spirit of 
loyalty is practical, is simple, is teachable, and 
is for all normal men. And in order to train 
loyalty to loyalty in a great mass of the people, 

244 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

what is most of all needed is to help them to be 
less estranged than they are from their own 
social order. 

To sum up, then, this too lengthy review, 
the problem of the training of our American 
people as a whole to a larger and richer social 
loyalty is the problem of educating the self- 
estranged spirit of our nation to know itself 
better. And now that we have the problem 
before us, what solution can we offer ? 

The question of what methods a training 
for loyalty should follow, is the special prob- 
lem of our next lecture. But there is indeed 
one proposal, looking towards a better train- 
ing of our nation to loyalty, which I have here 
to make as I close this statement of our na- 
tional needs. The proposal is this. We need 
and we are beginning to get, in this country, 
a new and wiser provincialism. I mean by 
such provincialism no mere renewal of the 
old sectionalism. I mean the sort of pro- 
vincialism which makes people want to ideal- 
ize, to adorn, to ennoble, to educate, their 
own province; to hold sacred its traditions, to 

245 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

honor its worthy dead, to support and to 
multiply its public possessions. I mean the 
spirit which shows itself in the multiplying of 
public libraries, in the laying out of public 
parks, in the work of local historical associa- 
tions, in the enterprises of village improve- 
ment societies, — yes, even in the genea- 
logical societies, and in the provincial clubs. 
I mean also the present form of that spirit 
which has originated, endowed, and fostered the 
colleges and universities of our Western towns, 
cities, and states, and which is so well shown 
throughout our country in our American pride 
in local institutions of learning. Of course, 
we have always had something of this provin- 
cialism. It is assuming new forms amongst us. 
I want to emphasize how much good it can do 
in training us to higher forms of loyalty. 

That such provincialism is a good national 
trait to possess, the examples of Germany 
and of Great Britain, in their decidedly con- 
trasting but equally important ways, can show 
us. The English village, the English country 
life, the Scotsman's love for his own native 

246 



SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS 

province, — these are central features in de- 
termining the sort of loyalty upon which the 
British Empire as a whole has depended. 
Germany, like ourselves, has suffered much 
from sectionalism. But even to-day the Ger- 
man national consciousness presupposes and 
depends upon a highly developed provincial 
life and loyalty. One of the historical weak- 
nesses of France has been such a centraliza- 
tion of power and of social influence about 
Paris as has held in check the full develop- 
ment of the dignity of provincial consciousness 
in that country. Now, in our country we do 
not want any mutual hatred of sections. But 
we do want a hearty growth of provincial 
ideals. And we want this growth just for 
the sake of the growth of a more general and 
effective patriotism. We want to train na- 
tional loyalty through provincial loyalty. We 
want the ideals of the various provinces of 
our country to be enriched and made definite, 
and then to be strongly represented in the 
government of the nation. For, I insist, it is 
not the sect, it is not the labor-union, it is not 

247 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



the political partisan organization, but it is 
the widely developed provincial loyalty which 
is the best mediator between the narrower 
interests of the individual and the larger 
patriotism of our nation. Further centraliza- 
tion of power in the national government, with- 
out a constantly enriched and diversified pro- 
vincial consciousness, can only increase the 
estrangement of our national spirit from its own 
life. On the other hand, history shows that 
if you want a great people to be strong, you 
must depend upon provincial loyalties to me- 
diate between the people and their nation. 

The present tendency to the centralization 
of power in our national government seems to 
me, then, a distinct danger. It is a substitu- 
tion of power for loyalty. To the increase of 
a wise provincialism in our country, I myself 
look for the best general social means of train- 
ing our people in loyalty to loyalty. But of 
course such training in loyalty to loyalty must 
largely be a matter of the training of indi- 
viduals, and to the problem of individual train- 
ing for loyalty our next lecture will be devoted. 

248 



VI 

TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 



LECTURE VI 



TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 

TWO objections which have been expressed 
to me by hearers of the foregoing lectures 
of this course deserve a word of mention here, 
as I begin the present discussion of the work 
of training individuals for a loyal life. 

I 

The first of these objections concerns my 
use of the term " loyalty. " " Why," so the ob- 
jection runs, "why can you not avoid the 
endless repetition of your one chosen term, 
6 loyalty' ? Why would not other w^ords, such 
as fidelity, devotion, absorption, trustworthi- 
ness, faithfulness, express just as well the 
moral quality to which you give the one name 
that you have employed?" 

The second objection concerns my defini- 
tion of the term "loyalty," and is closely con- 

251 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



nected with the first objection. It runs as 
follows: "Why do you insist that the cause 
which the loyal man serves must be a social 
cause? Why might one not show the same 
essential moral quality that you define, when 
the cause that he serves is something quite 
unearthly, or something earthly but quite 
unsocial ? Saint Simeon on his pillar, Buddha 
seeking enlightenment under his lonely tree, 
the Greek geometer attempting to square the 
circle, — were they not as faithful as your 
loyal man is? And were their causes social 
causes ?" 

I reply to these objections together. I have 
defined my present usage of the popular term 
"loyalty" in my own distinctly technical way. 
Loyalty so far means for us, in these lectures, 
the willing, the thoroughgoing, and the prac- 
tical devotion of a self to a cause. And a 
cause means, in these lectures, something 
that is conceived by its loyal servant as unify- 
ing the lives of various human begins into one 
life. Now, I know of no other word whose 
popular usage comes closer than does that of 

252 



TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 



the good old word u loyalty " to embodying the 
meaning that I have given to the term. I 
think, then, that I have a right to my technical 
definition. It is based upon popular usage, and 
goes beyond that usage only in a very natural 
way. I intend soon to show you that we 
are now ready to substitute for this first tech- 
nical definition another and a still more sig- 
nificant definition which will reveal to us, for 
the first time, the true spirit of the enterprise 
in which all the loyal are actually engaged. 
But I can reach this higher definition only 
through the simpler definition. To that, in- 
adequate as it is, my discussion must cling 
until we are ready for something better. 

Granting, however, my own definition of 
my term, I cannot easily use any other popular 
or philosophical term in the same way. I 
cannot substitute the word "devotion" for the 
term "loyalty, " since loyalty is to my mind a 
very special kind of devotion. A man might 
be devoted to the pursuit of pleasure; but 
that would not make him loyal. Fidelity, 
again, is, in my own account, but one aspect 

253 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



of loyalty. Loyalty includes fidelity, but 
means more, since, besides fidelity, decisive- 
ness and the acceptance of a cause also be- 
long to loyalty ; and the fidelity of a dog to his 
master is only a pathetic hint of loyalty, or a 
fragment of the disposition that, in human 
beings, expresses itself in the full reasonable- 
ness of loyal life. The same comment holds 
in case of the word " faithfulness." As for ab- 
sorption, the loyal are absorbed in their cause, 
but the angry man is absorbed in his pas- 
sion. Yet such absorption is not what I have 
in mind. The loyal, again, possess trust- 
worthiness, but a watch may also be trust- 
worthy ; and that word ill expresses the vol- 
untary nature of the spirit of loyalty. 

I cannot find, then, another term to meet 
my purpose. My usage of this term is justi- 
fied mainly by that simplification of our con- 
ceptions of the moral life which our theory 
has made possible. 

As for my insistence upon the social aspect 
of the loyal life, that insistence implies two 
assertions about such cases as those of the 

254 



TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 

lonely saint on the pillar, or Buddha seeking 
enlightenment, or the geometer trying to solve 
his problem. The first assertion is that all 
such lonely enterprises have moral value only 
when they are indeed a part of one's service 
of the cause of humanity. The saint on the 
pillar was presumably trying to add to the 
store of merits which the universal church 
was supposed to possess. If so, he had a 
social cause which he served; namely, the 
church, — the mystic union of all the faithful. 
His cause may have been wrongly conceived 
by him, but it was, in our sense, a cause, and 
a social one. The Buddha of the legend was 
seeking to save not only himself but mankind. 
He was loyal, therefore, in our sense. As for 
the geometer, his search for the solution of his 
problem concerned one of the deepest com- 
mon interests of the human mind; namely, 
an interest in the discovery and possession of 
rational truth. Truth is for everybody; and 
it unifies the lives of all men. Whoever seeks 
for a truth, as important as geometrical truth 
is, and seeks it with a serious devotion, has a 

255 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

social cause. And no utterly lonely devotion 
to anything is morally worthy of a human 
being. 

My second assertion as to the social aspect 
of causes is this. Sometimes men have indeed 
sought to serve God in an actually unsocial 
way, and have been devoted to a world of 
unseen and superhuman beings. But such 
beings, if they are real and are worthy of a 
moral devotion at all, are worthy of the devo- 
tion of all mankind ; and in such devotion, if 
it is indeed justified, all men may be blessed. 
The worship of the gods, even when a lonely 
worshipper has expressly tried not to think of 
his fellows, has therefore always implied a 
loyalty to the cause of one's own people, or 
else of mankind at large. The Christian's 
devotion to God is inseparably bound up with 
his loyalty to the mystic union of the faithful 
in the church. The non-social aspect of 
genuine worship is therefore but apparent. 
Religion seeks a certain fulfilment of the 
purposes of the moral life, — a fulfilment 
which we are hereafter to study. On the 

256 



TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 



other hand, loyalty itself, as a devotion to a 
cause which unifies many human lives, is, as 
we shall see, profoundly religious in its spirit. 
For men, viewed merely as natural phe- 
nomena, are many, and mutually conflicting 
creatures. Loyalty aims at their unity, and 
such unity, as we shall see, is always some- 
thing that has its supernatural meaning. In 
brief, then, to worship divine powers in a 
genuinely ethical spirit, is always to serve a 
cause which is also, in the human sense, 
social, — the cause of the state, or of the church, 
or of humanity; while, on the other hand, 
loyally to serve causes is to aim to give hu- 
man life a supernatural, — an essentially divine 
meaning. 

And these are the reasons why I have in- 
sisted upon the social aspect of loyalty. 

Bear, then, I pray you, with my too often 
repeated term; accept its apparently too 
narrow definition. We are on the way 
towards a view of the spiritual unity of all 
human life, — a view which may serve to 
justify this technical usage of a term, this 

s 257 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



long dwelling upon the details of the moral 
life, these seemingly commonplace com- 
ments upon social problems. 

II 

How shall individuals be trained for a loyal 
life? That is the question of the present 
lecture. In trying to answer this question I 
shall first dwell, briefly, and very inadequately, 
upon the place that a training for loyalty 
should occupy in the education of the young. 
Then I shall speak of the way in which ma- 
ture people are trained for such forms of loy- 
alty as belong to the actual business of the 
social world. 

Whether you like my use of terms or not, 
you will agree that training the young for a 
willing and thoroughgoing devotion of the 
self to a social cause, must be a long and 
manifold task. Before true loyalty can ap- 
pear in any but rather crude and fragmen- 
tary forms in the life of a growing human 
being, a long discipline of the whole mind 
must have preceded. One must have become 

258 



TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 

capable of conceiving what a social cause is. 
One must have learned decisiveness and 
fidelity through an elaborate general prepara- 
tion of the will. Therefore, while the begin- 
nings of loyalty extend far back into the life 
of childhood, its full development must be- 
long to mature years. Affection, obedience, 
a gradually increasing persistence in whole- 
some activities, a growing patience and self- 
control, all these, in the natural growth of a 
human being, are preliminaries to the more 
elaborate forms of loyalty. By themselves 
they are not loyalty. In accordance with the 
general trend of modern educational theory, 
we therefore naturally point out that, in train- 
ing children for future loyalty, teachers must 
avoid trying to awaken any particular sort of 
loyalty before its fitting basis is laid, and 
before a sufficient age has been reached. The 
basis in question involves a rich development 
of social habits. The age for true and system- 
atic loyalty can hardly precede adolescence. 
One must obtain the material for a moral 
personality before a true conscience can be 

259 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

won. Conscience, as we have seen, is the 
flower and not the root of the moral life. 

But there is one contribution which child- 
hood early makes to a possible future loyalty, 
— a contribution which we sometimes fail 
to take . sufficiently into account. That con- 
tribution is the well-known disposition to 
idealize heroes and adventures, to live an 
imaginary life, to have ideal comrades, and to 
dream of possible great enterprises. I have 
for years insisted, along with many others who 
have studied our educational problems, that 
these arts of idealization which childhood so 
often and so spontaneously practises, are not 
only in themselves fascinating and joyous, but 
are also a very important preliminary to that 
power to conceive the true nature of social 
causes upon which later loyalty depends. If 
I have never been fascinated in childhood by 
my heroes and by the wonders of life, it is 
harder to fascinate me later with the call of 
duty. Loyalty, as we have already seen, and 
as we have yet further to see, is an idealizing 
of human life, a communion with invisible 

260 



TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 

aspects of our social existence. Too great 
literalness in the interpretation of human 
relations is, therefore, a foe to the develop- 
ment of loyalty. If my neighbor is to me 
merely a creature of a day, who walks and 
eats and talks and buys and sells, I shall never 
learn to be loyal to his cause and to mine. 
But the child who plays with ideal comrades, 
or who idealizes with an unconscious wisdom 
our literal doings and his own, is, in his own 
way, getting glimpses of that real spiritual 
world whose truth and whose unity we have 
hereafter more fully to consider. It is in his 
fantasies, then, that a child begins to enter 
into the kingdom of heaven. Such fantasies 
may need to be carefully guarded. They 
may take a dangerous or even a disastrous 
turn in the life of one or another child. But 
in their better phases they are not mere illu- 
sions and are great blessings. They are 
prophecies of the coming of conscience, and 
of a possible union with the world of an 
actually divine truth. 

Yet since loyalty involves conduct, such 

261 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



fantasies of childhood are indeed but a prep- 
aration for loyalty. And higher loyalty be- 
longs later. But in normal childhood there 
do indeed appear, in a fragmentary way, 
forms of conduct which already include a 
simple, but, so far as it goes, an actual loy- 
alty to the causes the child already under- 
stands. You all know some of these forms. 
The members of a gang of boys, sometimes of 
bad boys, show a certain loyalty to the cause 
represented by the gang. School children 
develop the code of honor that forbids the 
telling of tales to the teacher. Truthfulness 
becomes a conscious virtue early in normal 
childhood, and has its own childish casuistry, 
— often an amusing one. 

The rule, of course, regarding all such 
childhood beginnings of loyalty is that we 
should always respect whatever is in the 
least socially tolerable about the expressions 
of even the crudest loyalty. The parent or 
teacher who trifles with the code of honor of 
children by encouraging the talebearer, or 
by even requiring that a child should become 

262 



TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 



an informer, is simply encouraging disloyalty, 
He outrages the embryonic conscience of his 
young charges. 

For the rest, children appreciate the loy- 
alty or disloyalty of our conduct towards them 
sooner than they can define their own duty. 
And the one who would train for loyalty must 
therefore be, in his dealings with children, 
peculiarly scrupulous about his own loyalty. 

Ill 

But after all, whatever be the best train- 
ing of childhood for a coming moral life, the 
rapid development of loyalty itself belongs 
to adolescence, just as the outcome of that 
development is reached only in mature life. 
Upon the importance of youth as the natural 
period for training in more elaborate forms of 
loyal conduct, our recent authority regarding 
adolescence, President Stanley Hall, has in- 
sisted. In normal youth various forms of 
loyalty, of a highly complex character, appear 
with a great deal of spontaneity. Two of 
these forms have become important in the life 

263 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

of the youth of many nations, and certainly 
in the life of our own American youth to-day. 
The one form is loyalty to the fraternal or- 
ganization, — very generally to a secret fra- 
ternity. The other form is loyalty to one's 
own side in an athletic contest, or to one's 
college or other institution, viewed as an 
athletic entity. 

Both of these forms of loyalty have their 
excesses, and lead to well-known abuses. The 
secret fraternities may become organizations 
for general mischief and disorder; the ath- 
letic contests may involve overmuch passion, 
and may even do harm to the general loyalty 
by fostering the spirit of unfair play. Now, it 
is notable that both of these sorts of abuses 
increase when the fraternities and the athletic 
organizations are imitated in the lower schools 
by the children. The resulting dangers show 
that loyalty ought not to be a prematurely 
forced plant. It should grow, in its various 
forms, in its due time. Hence those in charge 
of our secondary schools should not be misled 
by their knowledge of the preciousness of loy- 

264 



TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 

alty into encouraging an overhasty develop- 
ment of secret fraternities and of fully formed 
athletic organizations amongst those who are 
not old enough to reap the fruits of such forms 
of loyalty. The coming of true loyalty may be 
seriously hindered by the too early organiza- 
tion of the perfectly natural gang of boys into 
some too elaborate social structure. Harm 
has been done of late years by too much aping 
of athletic and fraternity life in connection with 
the lower grades of schools. 

But when youth is fairly reached, and the 
secret fraternity and the athletic organization 
become spontaneously prominent, it is plain 
that our efforts to train our youth to a higher 
life must recognize these natural types of 
loyalty, but must do so without overempha- 
sizing their cruder features. We must always 
build upon what we have; and therefore any 
unnecessary hostility to the fraternities and to 
the athletic life is profoundly objectionable. 
But the most unhappy features of the athletic, 
and in some measure of the fraternity, life in 
our colleges and universities are due to the 

265 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

false social prominence which the public opin- 
ion of those who have nothing to do with college 
life often forces upon our youth. The athletic 
evils, such as they are, of our academic world, 
are not due to the college students themselves 
nearly so much as to the absurd social promi- 
nence which the newspapers and the vast 
modern crowds give to contests which ought 
to be cheerful youthful sports, wherein a 
natural loyalty is to be trained, but wherein a 
national prominence of the games and the con- 
testants is utterly out of place. It is as absurd 
to overemphasize such matters as it is wicked to 
interfere unnecessarily with any other aspect 
of youthful moral development. It is the 
extravagant publicity of our intercollegiate 
sports which is responsible for their principal 
evils. Leave wholesome youth to their natural 
life, not irritated and not aroused to unwise 
emotions by the exaggerated comments of the 
press, and our athletic organizations would 
serve their proper function of training the 
muscles as well as the souls of our youth to 
loyalty. As for the fraternities, — the false 

266 



TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 



social prominence which their graduate mem- 
bers sometimes force upon them is a distinct 
hindrance to the work that they can do in train- 
ing youth for a loyal life. 

Fair play in sport is a peculiarly good instance 
of loyalty. And in insisting upon the spirit 
of fair play, the elders who lead and who or- 
ganize our youthful sports can do a great work 
for the nation. The coach, or the other leader 
in college sports, to whom fair play is not a first 
concern, is simply a traitor to our youth and to 
our nation. If the doctrine of these lectures 
is right, we can see with what stupendous hu- 
man interests he is trifling. 

As to other ways in which the loyalty of our 
youth can be trained, we still too much lack, 
in this country, dignified modes of celebrating 
great occasions. Once the Fourth of July 
was a day for training patriotic loyalty ; it has 
now degenerated, and is probably irretrievably 
lost to the cause of true loyalty. Memorial 
Day and our national Thanksgiving Day are 
our best holidays for expressing loyalty to the 
community and to the nation. Let us cherish 

267 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

them, and preserve them from desecration. 
But with us both holidays and public cere- 
monials have a certain democratic tendency to 
degeneration. We need more means for sym- 
bolizing loyalty, both in public monuments 
and in ceremonials, as well as in forms of 
common public service to our community. 
European nations glorify the army as a prac- 
tical teacher of loyalty to the youth. The 
loyalty thus won is mingled with the war-spirit, 
and is therefore dear bought. But we unques- 
tionably need substitutes for military service 
as a means of training for a loyal life. It be- 
longs to the task of our social leaders to invent 
and to popularize such substitutes. Herein lies 
one of the great undertakings of the future. 

IV 

The true sphere of a complete loyalty is 
mature life. We constantly need, all of us, 
individual training in the art of loyalty. 
How is this work accomplished in the social 
order ? In answering this question, let history 
and our daily social experience be our guides. 

268 



TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 

The main lessons that these guides teach us, as 
I think, are three : First, our loyalty is trained 
and kept alive by the influence of personal 
leaders. Secondly, the higher forms of train- 
ing for loyalty involve a momentous process 
which I shall call the Idealizing of the Cause, 
Thirdly, loyalty is especially perfected through 
great strains, labors, and sacrifices in the ser- 
vice of the cause. 

Of the three factors here mentioned, the 
first and second are inseparable and universal. 
If we are to be made loyal, we want personal 
leaders, and highly idealized causes. In ex- 
ceptional cases a man may seem to be his own 
sole leader in loyalty. But this is rare. Al- 
ways, to be sure, a loyal man uses his own 
leadership, since, as we saw in our fourth lec- 
ture, his conscience is his leader. But usually 
he needs the aid of other personal leaders be- 
sides himself. As for the idealizing of the 
cause, — I have called it a momentous process. 
How momentous we shall soon see. For it is 
by this process that we are introduced into the 
true spiritual world. 

269 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



Let me illustrate my theses. We are al\ 
familiar with the history of clubs and of sec- 
tarian social organizations generally. Now 
how are these social enterprises, good or evil, 
made to succeed ? 

You all know that if a club or a sect is to be 
begun, or if a political or social movement is 
to be rendered effective, two things are neces- 
sary: first, a leader, or a group of leaders, 
eager, enthusiastic, convinced, or, at the worst, 
capable of speaking as if they were convinced, — 
leaders persistent, obstinate, and in their own 
fitting way aggressive ; and, secondly, a cause 
that can be idealized so that, when the leaders 
talk of it in their glowing exhortations, it seems 
to be a sort of supernatural being, in one sense 
impersonal, but in another sense capable of 
being personified, an exalted but still per- 
sonally interesting spiritual power. The two 
aspects of loyalty, the personal and the seem- 
ingly superpersonal, must thus be emphasized 
together. 

Consider, in particular, the process of mak- 
ing almost any new club succeed. Some group 

270 



TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 

of persons, sometimes a single leader, must be 
found, willing to devote time and energy to 
directing the new organization. The leader 
or leaders must believe the enterprise worth 
w T hile, must proclaim its importance in vigor- 
ous terms, and must patiently stand by the 
club through all the doubtful first period of its 
existence. But the personal influence of these 
leaders cannot be enough to arouse any genuine 
loyalty in the members of the club, unless the 
organization itself can be made to appear as 
a sort of ideal personality, of a higher than 
merely human type. If the leaders impress 
their companions as being people who are 
concerned merely with their own private im- 
portance, they in vain persist in their propa- 
ganda. In that case the club is nicknamed as 
their particular pet or as their fad ; one makes 
light of their energy, one maligns their motives, 
and the club crumbles into nothing. In order 
to succeed, the leaders must give to the club 
the character of a sort of ideal entity, often 
of an improvised mythological goddess, who 
is to be conceived as favoring her devotees, 

271 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

as bestowing upon them extraordinary social 
or spiritual benefits. Even the convivial festi- 
vals of the club, if such festivals there be, 
must have some sort of ceremonial dignity 
about them, — a dignity such as suggests the 
impersonal or superpersonal rank of the club 
as an ideal. The club must become a cause, 
in whose service the members are one. If it is 
a reform club, or other body engaged in a 
propaganda, then social interests that lie out- 
side of the boundaries of the club's separate 
being serve to define this cause; the club is 
then merely an instrument to further a loyalty 
that is intelligible apart from the existence of 
this very instrument; and in such a case the 
leaders of the club have mainly to insist effec- 
tively upon the importance of this already exist- 
ing loyalty. But if the club is to be an end in 
itself, — an organization that exists for its own 
sake and for the sake of its own members, — 
the process of learning to ascribe to the new 
club the ideal dignity of a common cause is 
sometimes a difficult process. The devices 
used by the leaders are, upon occasion, very 

272 



TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 



direct. One simply calls the club an ideal ; 
one personifies it in various poetical ways ; 
and one praises it as a sort of superhuman 
being. Or, more practically still, one incor- 
porates the club, endows it with a legal per- 
sonality, and makes it a property owner. 
But other devices are more indirect. Club 
ceremonials and festivals, some more or less 
rudimentary club ritual, perhaps also the 
various familiar devices of the secret societies, 
the air of mystery, club emblems and symbols, 
— all serve to give to the club the appearances, 
at least, of a fitting cause for the exercise of 
loyalty. Another indirect device consists in 
naming the club after famous or beloved peo- 
ple, now dead, whose honor and whose mem- 
ory idealize the new organization. Or, again, 
one arbitrarily calls the club ancient and dig- 
nifies it by a more or less conscious myth about 
its past. All such devices serve to call out 
loyalty in ways that may be comparatively 
trivial, but that may also be of a very profound 
significance, if the new organization is actually 
a fitting object of loyalty. 

t 273 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



With proper changes the foregoing account 
applies to the plans that are useful in estab- 
lishing a new religious sect. Always you find 
the same union of personal enthusiasm on the 
part of leaders with a disposition to define the 
ideal of the new organization in terms that 
transcend the limits of individual human life. 
Man, even when he is a member of a purely 
convivial social body, is prone to try to con- 
ceive both his own life, and also that of this 
social body, in superhuman terms. Expe- 
rience thus shows that a procedure of the sort 
just described does succeed, in many cases, in 
training people — sometimes small groups, 
sometimes great bodies of men — to new forms 
of loyalty. 

The plans whereby an actually ancient 
institution is kept in possession of the loyalty 
of its own natural servants do not in their 
essence differ from the ones just characterized. 
The loyalty of a body of alumni to their 
university is a classic instance of a loyalty 
kept alive by the union of an institution with 
the personality of its living leaders. Even 

274 



TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 



so, the loyalty of the sons of a subjugated 
nationality, such as the Irish or the Poles, to 
their country, is kept alive through precisely 
such an union of the influence of individual 
leaders with the more impersonal reverence 
for the idealized, although no longer politi- 
cally existent nationality. 

You see, so far, how the personal leaders and 
the superhuman cause are inseparable in the 
training of loyalty. The cause comes to be 
idealized partly because the leaders so vigor- 
ously insist that it is indeed ideal. On the 
other hand, the leaders become and remain 
personally efficacious by reason of the dignity 
that the cause confers upon them. Were they 
considered apart from their cause, they would 
seem to be merely ambitious propagandists, 
seeking gain or notoriety. To those without 
the range of their personal influence, they often 
seem such. Yet if they did not speak for the 
cause, and so give to it the life of their personal 
enthusiasm, nobody would be taught to regard 
their cause as ideal. The cause thus needs to 
become incarnate, as it were, in the persons of 

275 



THE PHILOSOPHY OP LOYALTY 



the leaders ; but the leaders get their personal 
influence through the fact that they seem to be 
incarnations of the cause. 

Facts of this sort are familiar. You can 
observe them whenever you attend an anni- 
versary meeting, or other such ceremonial, of 
your own club, and whenever you listen to 
those who represent any successful propa- 
ganda. But how vastly significant such facts 
may be in determining the lives of whole 
generations and nations and races of men, you 
can only judge if you read the general history 
of humanity in the light of the principles now 
pointed out. If our philosophy of loyalty has 
any truth, the history of human loyalty con- 
cerns whatever is most important in the annals 
of mankind. And the whole history of loyalty 
is the history of the inseparable union of the 
personal influence of leaders with the tendency 
to idealize causes. 

V 

But the idealization of the cause, although 
never possible without the aid of living per- 

276 



TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 

sons, may also depend upon still other factors 
than the direct personal influence of leaders. 
When we consider the general history of loyalty 
amongst men, our attention is soon attracted 
to a deeply instructive process whereby, in 
certain cases, — some of them very great 
and wonderful cases, — causes have been ideal- 
ized not only by the personal influence of the 
leaders, but also by certain deeply pathetic 
motives to which the leaders could constantly 
appeal. I refer to the process illustrated by 
the history of lost causes. 

I referred a moment ago to the loyalty of 
the Irish and of the Poles to their own lost 
nationalities. Now such loyalty to a lost 
cause may long survive, not merely in the 
more or less unreal form of memories and 
sentiments, but in a genuinely practical way. 
And such loyalty to a lost cause may be some- 
thing that far transcends the power of any 
mere habit. New plans, endless conspiracies, 
fruitful social enterprises, great political or- 
ganizations, — yes, in the extreme case, — > 
new religions, may grow up upon the basis 

277 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

of such a loyalty to a cause whose worldly 
fortunes seem lost, but whose vitality may out- 
last centuries, and may involve much novel 
growth of opinion, of custom, and of ideals. 

The most notable religious development 
which the world has ever seen, the religion of 
Israel, together with its successor, Christian- 
ity, —this whole religious evolution, — is, as we 
must here point out, the historical result of a 
national loyalty to a lost cause. The political 
unity of all the tribes of Israel, attained but 
for a moment, so to speak, under David and 
Solomon, and then lost from the visible world 
of history, survived as an ideal. Only as 
such a lost ideal could this conception of what 
Israel once was and ought again to be inspire 
the Old Testament prophets to speak the word 
of the Lord regarding the way of righteousness 
whereby, as the prophets held, the prosperity 
of Israel was to be restored. Only this same 
lost political ideal, and this resulting discovery 
of the prophetic theory of the divine govern- 
ment of human affairs, could lead over to that 
later religious interpretation and to that re- 

278 



TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 

writing of the whole ancient history of Israel, 
which we now read in our Old Testament. 
Only upon the same basis could the Messianic 
idea come to be defined ; and only thus could 
the prophetic doctrine of the universal future 
triumph of righteousness come to be formu- 
lated. And so through an historical process, 
every step of which depended upon a pathetic 
and yet glorious loyalty to a lost national 
cause, the ideals in question were at once 
universalized and intensified until, through 
Israel, all the nations of Christendom have 
been blessed. In consequence, to-day, in 
speaking of its own hopes of the salvation of 
mankind, and in describing its coming king- 
dom of heaven, Christianity still uses the fa- 
miliar terms : Zion, the throne of David, 
Jerusalem, — terms whose original application 
was to places and to persons first made notable 
in their own time merely by reason of the petty 
tribal feuds of an obscure province. Thus 
loyalty, steadfast and yet developing through 
centuries, gradually transformed what were 
once seemingly insignificant matters of local 

279 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



politics into the most sacred concerns of a 
world religion. 

Loyalty to lost causes is, then, not only a 
possible thing, but one of the most potent 
influences of human history. In such cases, 
the cause comes to be idealized through its 
very failure to win temporary and visible suc- 
cess. The result for loyalty may be vast. I 
need not remind you that the early Christian 
church itself was at first founded directly upon 
a loyalty to its own lost cause, — a cause which 
it viewed as heavenly just because here on 
earth the enemies seemed to have triumphed, 
and because the Master had departed from 
human vision. The whole history of Chris- 
tianity is therefore one long lesson as to how 
a cause may be idealized through apparent 
defeat, and how even thereby loyalty may be 
taught to generation after generation of men, 
and may develop into endlessly new forms, 
and so may appeal to peoples to whom the 
cause in question was originally wholly strange. 
This history shows us how such a teaching 
and such an evolution of an idea may be fur- 

280 



TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 



thered by what seems at first most likely to 
discourage loyalty, that is, by loss, by sorrow, 
by worldly defeat. 

Loyalty to a lost cause, whatever the grade of 
dignity of the cause, depends in part, of course, 
upon the same motives which the simpler and 
more direct forms of loyalty employ. 

But when a cause is lost in the visible world, 
and when, nevertheless, it survives in the 
hearts of its faithful followers, one sees more 
clearly than ever that its appeal is no longer 
to be fully met by any possible present deed. 
Whatever one can just now do for the cause is 
thus indeed seen to be inadequate. All the 
more, in consequence, does this cause demand 
that its followers should plan and work for 
the far-off future, for whole ages and seons of 
time ; should prepare the way for their Lord, 
the cause, and make his paths straight. Ac- 
tivity becomes thus all the more strenuous, 
just because its consequences are viewed as 
so far-reaching and stupendous. Man's ex- 
tremity is loyalty's opportunity. The present 
may seem dark. All the greater the work 

281 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



yet to be done. The distant future must be 
conquered. How vast the undertaking, — how 
vast, but therefore how inspiring ! 

All this larger and broader devotion of those 
loyal to a lost cause is colored and illuminated 
by strong emotion. Sorrow over what has 
been lost pierces deep into the hearts of the 
faithful. So much the more are these hearts 
stirred to pour out their devotion. Mean- 
while, the glamour of memory is over the past. 
Whatever was commonplace about the former 
visible fortunes of the lost cause is now for- 
gotten. For the memory of those who sorrow 
over loss is, as we all know, fond of precious 
myths, and views these myths as a form in 
which truth appears. In the great days that 
have passed away — in the days before the 
cause suffered defeat — there was indeed 
tragedy; but there was glory. Legend, often 
truer, — yes, as Aristotle said of poetry, more 
philosophical than history, — thus reads into that 
past not what the lost cause literally was, but 
what it meant to be. Its body is dead. But 
it has risen again. The imagination, chastened 

282 



TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 



by all this grief, stirred by all this deep need, 
not only reforms the story of the past, but 
builds wonderful visions of what is yet to be. 

Loyalty for the lost cause is thus attended 
by two comrades, grief and imagination. 
Yet loyalty, always strenuous and active, is 
not enervated by these deep emotions, nor yet 
confused by the wealth of these visions; but 
rather devotes itself to resolving upon what 
shall be. Grief it therefore transforms into 
a stimulating sense of need. If we have lost, 
then let us find. Loyalty also directs its deeds 
by the visions that imagination furnishes; 
and meanwhile it demands in turn that the 
imagination shall supply it with visions that 
can be translated into deeds. When it hears 
from the imagination the story of the coming 
triumph, it does not become passive. Rather 
does it say : Watch, for ye know not the day 
or the hour when the triumph of the cause is 
to come. 

Hora novissima 
Tempora pessima 
Sunt, vigilemus. 

283 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

This wonderful awakening from the pros- 
tration of grief to the stern but fascinating re- 
solve to live and to be active for the lost cause, 
this freeing of the imagination through the 
very agony of missing the dear presence in the 
visible world, and this complete control both 
of such passion and of such imagination 
through the will to make all things work to- 
gether for the good of the cause, — all this is 
the peculiar privilege of those who are loyal 
to a cause which the world regards as lost, 
and which the faithful view as ascended into 
a higher realm, certain to come again in re- 
newed might and beauty. Thus may grief 
minister to loyalty. 

And I may add, as an obvious truth of hu- 
man nature, that loyalty is never raised to its 
highest levels without such grief. For what 
one learns from experience of grief over loss 
is precisely the true link between loyalty as 
a moral attitude, and whatever is eternally 
valuable in religion. One begins, when one 
serves the lost causes, to discover that, in some 
sense, one ought to devote one's highest loy- 

284 



TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 

alty precisely to the causes that are too good 
to be visibly realized at any one moment of this 
poor wretched fleeting time world in which 
we see and touch and find mere things, mere 
sensations, mere feelings of the moment. 
Loyalty wants the cause in its unity ; it seeks, 
therefore, something essentially superhuman. 
And therefore, as you see, loyalty is linked with 
religion. In its highest reaches it always is, 
therefore, the service of a cause that is just 
now lost — and lost because the mere now is 
too poor a vehicle for the presentation of that 
ideal unity of life of which every form of loyalty 
is in quest. Loyalty to loyalty, that cause of 
causes upon which I have so much insisted 
in the foregoing, is indeed just now in far too 
many ways a lost cause amongst men. But 
that is the fault of the men, not of the cause. 
Let us rejoice that we can serve a cause of 
which the world, as it is, is not yet worthy. 

The history of the lost causes is instructive, 
however, not only as showing us a new aspect 
of the value of loyalty, namely, what I have 
just called the link between loyalty and religion, 

285 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

but also as showing us something of the way 
in which grief, and imagination, and the stir- 
ring of our whole human nature to its very 
depths, through loss and through defeat, have 
served in the past as means of training in loyalty. 
This school of adversity has often been a hard 
one. But the loyalty that has been trained 
in this school has produced for us some of 
humanity's most precious spiritual treasures. 
Thus, then, through personal leaders and 
through suffering, loyalty learns to idealize 
its cause. 

VI 

What is the lesson of all the foregoing when 
we ask : How shall we ourselves seek training 
in loyalty? 

The first answer is obvious : Whatever our 
cause, we need personal leaders. And how 
shall we be surest of finding such personal 
leaders? Shall we look exclusively to those 
who are fellow-servants of our own chosen 
special causes ? We all do this. Yet this is 
often not enough. Familiarity and personal 

286 



TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 

misunderstandings often interfere with the 
guidance that our fellow-servants give us. 
We need the wider outlook. Close friendships 
are amongst the most powerful supports of 
loyalty. Yet when people confine themselves 
to regarding their close friends as their leaders 
in loyalty, they often become narrow and for- 
get the cause of universal loyalty. Much of 
the art of loyalty, consequently, depends upon 
training yourself to observe the loyal who are 
all about you, however remote their cause is 
from yours, however humble their lives. It is 
well also, whenever you have to fight, to learn 
the art of honoring your opponent's loyalty, 
even if you learn of it mainly through feeling 
the weight and the sharpness of his sword. 
"It is a deep cut; but a loyal enemy was he 
who could give it to me" — to think in such 
terms is to lighten the gloom of conflict with 
what may sometimes be more precious than a 
transient victory; for at such moments of 
honoring the loyally dangerous enemy, we 
begin to learn that all the loyal are in spirit 
serving, however unwittingly, the same uni- 

287 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



versal cause. To be sure, when men have 
once sufficiently learned that lesson, they cease 
to fight. But while fighting lasts, if you cannot 
love your enemy, it is a beautiful thing to be 
able to enjoy the sight of his loyalty. 

But men have not to fight one another in 
order to display loyalty. Open your eyes, then, 
to observe better the loyalty of the peaceful, 
as well as of the warriors. Consider especially 
the loyalty of the obscure, of the humble, of 
your near neighbors, of the strangers who by 
chance come under your notice. For such 
exemplars of loyalty you always have. Make 
them your leaders. Regard every loyal man 
as your leader in the service of the cause of 
universal loyalty. 

VII 

Bui our review of the history of loyalty 
taught us another lesson. We need not only 
leaders. We need to idealize our causes; 
that is, to see in them whatever most serves 
to link them to the cause of universal loyalty. 

288 



TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 



And the procedure whereby our causes are to 
be idealized is one involving a range of possible 
experiences and activities far too vast to be 
adequately surveyed in our present discussion. 
Here belong all those practically valuable rela- 
tions between loyalty and art, and between 
loyalty and religion, which the history of man- 
kind illustrates and which we can use in our 
own training for loyalty. Art supports loyalty 
whenever it associates our cause with beautiful 
objects, whenever it sets before us the symbols 
of our cause in any worthy expression, and 
whenever, again, by showing us any form 
of the beautiful, it portrays to us that very 
sort of learning and unity that loyalty cease- 
lessly endeavors to bring into human life. 
Thus viewed, art may be a teacher of loyalty. 
To say this is in no wise to prejudge the fa- 
mous question regarding the main purpose of 
art, and the relation of this purpose of art to 
the moral life. I am attempting here no theory 
of art. But it belongs to our present province 
merely to insist that part of our education in 
loyalty is to be won through whatever love of 

u 289 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



beauty and whatever knowledge of the beau- 
tiful we possess. The monuments of any cause 
that possesses monuments should associate 
our love of this cause with our love for beauty. 
Our personal causes, if they are worthy at all, 
need beautiful symbols to express to us their 
preciousness. Whatever is beautiful appears 
to us to embody harmonious relations. And 
the practical search for harmony of life consti- 
tutes loyalty. And thus training for loyalty 
includes the knowledge of the beautiful. 

Still more universal in its efficacy as an ideal- 
izer of private and personal causes is religion. 
In how far a genuinely religious experience 
results from loyalty, and in how far loyalty 
bears witness to any religiously significant 
truth, we have hereafter to see. Our closing 
lectures will deal with the bearing of loyalty 
upon religion. But we have here to mention, 
in passing, the converse relation ; namely, the 
influence of religion upon loyalty. We have 
to point out how large a part of the function 
of religion in human affairs consists in the 
idealizing of our loyalties, by linking our causes, 

290 



TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 



whatever they are, to a world which seems to 
us to be superhuman. 

VIII 

Art and religion, however, are not our only 
means for teaching ourselves to view our 
personal causes as linked with universal hu- 
man interests, and with an unseen superhu- 
man world. Sorrow, defeat, disappointment, 
failure, whenever these result from our efforts 
to serve a cause, may all be used to teach us 
the same lesson. How such lessons have been 
taught to humanity at large, the history of those 
lost causes which have been, even because of 
the loss, transformed into causes of permanent 
and world-wide importance, has now shown us. 
This lesson of the history of the lost causes is, 
however, one that has deep importance for 
our individual training. We do not always 
read this lesson aright. To keep our loyalty 
steadfast through defeat is something that we 
often view as a sort of extra strain upon loyalty, 
— the overcoming of a painful hindrance to 

291 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

loyalty. We ought not so to view the matter. 
Defeat and sorrow, when they are incurred in 
the service of a cause, ought rather to be a 
positive aid to loyalty. If we rightly view 
them, they will prove to be such an aid. For 
they enable us to see whether we have really 
given ourselves to the cause, or whether what 
we took for loyalty was a mere flare of sanguine 
emotion. When sorrow over a defeat in the 
service of our cause reverberates all through 
us, it can be made to reveal whatever loyalty 
we have. Let us turn our attention to this 
revelation, even while we suffer. We shall 
then know for what we have been living. And 
whoever, once deliberately dwelling upon his 
cause at a moment of defeat, does not find 
the cause dearer to him because of his grief, 
has indeed yet to learn what loyalty is. The 
cause, furthermore, when viewed in the light 
of our sorrow over our loss of its present for- 
tunes, at once tends to become idealized, — ■ 
as the lost throne of David was idealized by 
Israel, and as the departed Master's cause was 
idealized by the early church. 

292 



TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 

The disciples, in the well-known story, say 
concerning their lost Master to the stranger 
whom they meet on the lonely road to Emmaus : 
"We had trusted that it was he who should 
have redeemed Israel." But soon after "their 
eyes were opened, and they knew him, and he 
vanished out of their sight." Amongst all 
the legends of the risen Lord, this one most 
completely expresses the spirit of that loyalty 
which, triumphing even through defeat, win- 
ning the spirit even through the loss of a visible 
presence, was thereafter to conquer its world. 

Now, the lesson of such experiences, as his- 
tory records them, relates not merely to great 
movements and to mankind at large. It is 
a personal lesson. It concerns each one of 
us. I repeat : View your sorrow by itself, and 
it is a blind and hopeless fact; view your 
cause in the light of your sorrow, and the cause 
becomes transfigured. For you learn hereby 
that it was not this or that fortune, nor even 
this or that human life which constituted your 
cause. There was from the beginning, about 
your cause, something that to human vision 

293 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

seems superpersonal, unearthly as well as 
earthly. Now the memory of whatever is lost 
about your cause is peculiarly adapted to bring 
to your consciousness what this superpersonal 
element has been. I have already mentioned 
the merely psychological aspects of the pro- 
cess that, in such cases, goes on. The gla- 
mour which memory throws about the past, 
the awakening of the imagination when some 
visible presence is removed, the stimulating 
reaction from the first stroke of sorrow when- 
ever we are able once more to think of our cause 
itself, the transformation of our own ideas 
about the cause, by virtue of the very fact that, 
since our loss has so changed life, the cause 
can no longer be served in the old way, and 
must be the object of new efforts, and so of 
some new form of devotion, — all these are the 
idealizing motives which are present when 
defeat comes. I insist, — human loyalty can 
never be perfected without such sorrow. Re- 
gard defeat and bereavement, therefore, as 
loyalty's opportunity. Use them deliberately 
as means for idealizing the cause, and so far 

294 



TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 



bringing your personal cause into closer touch 
with the cause of universal loyalty. 

The most familiar of all those blows of for- 
tune which seem to us, for the moment, to 
make our personal cause a lost cause, is death, 
when it comes to those with whom our per- 
sonal cause has so far been bound up. And 
yet what motive in human life has done more 
to idealize the causes of individuals than death 
has done ? Death, viewed as a mere fact of 
human experience, and as a merely psychologi- 
cal influence, has been one of the greatest 
idealizers of human life. The memory of the 
dead idealizes whatever interest the living have 
in former days shared with the departed. 
Reverence for the dead dignifies the effort to 
carry on the work that they began, or that, if 
they died in childhood, our fond desire would 
have had them live to do. From the beginning 
a great portion of the religious imagination of 
mankind has centred about the fact of death. 
And the same motive works to-day in the 
minds of all the loyal, whatever their faith. 

Idealize your cause. This has been our 

295 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



maxim for the present aspect of our personal 
training in loyalty. I have offered merely some 
hints as to how this maxim may be carried into 
effect. How science can join with art and with 
religion, how joyous friendly intercourse can 
in its own place cooperate with our experiences 
of sorrow to teach us the lessons of idealizing 
our common causes, — all this I can only indi- 
cate. 

And thus we have before us two of the 
methods whereby individual loyalty is trained. 
The deliberate fixing of our attention upon the 
doings of loyal people, the deliberate use of 
those methods of human nature which tend 
to idealize our cause, — these are means for 
training in loyalty. 

Yet one method remains, — it is the most 
commonplace, yet often the hardest of all. 
Loyalty means giving the Self to the Cause. 
And the art of giving is learned by giving. 
Strain, endurance, sacrifice, toil, — the dear 
pangs of labor at the moments when perhaps 
defeat and grief most seem ready to crush our 
powers, and when only the very vehemence of 

296 



TRAINING FOR LOYALTY 

labor itself saves us from utter despair, — these 
are the things that most teach us what loyalty 
really is. I need not enlarge here upon an 
ancient and constantly repeated lesson of life, 
— a lesson which is known to all of you. The 
partisans of war often glorify war as a mor- 
alizer of humanity, because, as they say, 
only the greatest strains and dangers can teach 
men true loyalty. I do not think that war is 
needed for such lessons. The loyalty of the 
most peaceful enables us all to experience, 
sooner or later, what it means to give, whatever 
it was in our power to give, for the cause, and 
then to see our cause take its place, to human 
vision, amongst the lost causes. When such 
experiences come, let us face them without 
hesitation. For all these things together, — 
our personal friends who inspire us to the 
service of our own causes, the hosts of the loyal 
whom we know so little, but who constitute 
the invisible church of those who live in the 
spirit, the griefs that teach us the glory of what 
our human vision has lost from its field, the 
imagination that throws over all the range of 

297 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



human life its idealizing light, the labors that 
leave us breathless, the crushing defeats that 
test our devotion, — well, these, these are all 
only the means and the ministers whereby we 
are taught to enter the realm of spiritual truth. 



298 



VII 

LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 



LECTURE VII 

LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 

IN closing my last lecture I said that what- 
ever trains us in the arts of loyalty enables 
us to enter into a world of spiritual truth. 
These words were intended to indicate that 
the loyal life has another aspect than the one 
hitherto most emphasized in these lectures. 
Our foregoing account has been deliberately 
one-sided. We have been discussing the moral 
life as if one could define a plan of conduct 
without implying more about man's place in 
the real universe than we have yet made ex- 
plicit in these lectures. Hence our discussion, 
so far, is open to obvious objections. 

For, in talking about the good of loyalty, 
we have indeed appealed to human experience 
to show us wherein that good consists. But 
our very appeal also showed us that loyalty is 
good for a man precisely because he believes 
that his cause itself, even apart from his ser- 

301 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

vice, is good, and that both his cause and its 
goodness are realities, founded in facts which 
far transcend his individual life and his per- 
sonal experience. Now, one may well doubt 
whether this belief of a loyal man is, in any 
individual case, a well-founded belief. And 
if it is not well founded, one may well ques- 
tion whether the loyal man's good is not, 
after all, an illusory good, which will vanish 
from his experience as soon as he becomes 
enlightened. Since any instance of loyalty 
is subject to this sceptical inquiry, one may 
doubt whether even what we have called the 
supreme cause, that of loyalty to loyalty, is 
a good cause. For any or all loyalties may be 
founded in illusion, and then it would be an 
illusion that the fostering of loyalty amongst 
men is a finally worthy undertaking. 

I 

Objections of this sort are best stated by 
those to whom they actually occur as serious 
difficulties regarding the discussions contained 
in the foregoing lectures. A dear friend of 

302 



LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 

mine, without receiving any instigation from 
me to help me by such an act, has so aptly 
summed up the objections here in question, 
that I can best show you precisely where we now 
stand by reading to you a portion of a letter 
which he has written to me, after hearing the 
first portion of my account of the good of 
loyalty. 

"'Loyalty to loyalty,"' writes my friend, 
"doesn't seem ultimate. Is it not loyalty to 
all objects of true loyalty that is our ultimate 
duty? The object, not the relation, — the 
universe and the devotion to it, not the devo- 
tion alone, is the object of our ultimate devo- 
tion. ... Is it not the glory of this goal that 
lends dignity to all loyal search, — our own 
or that of others ? It is because of this goal 
that we cheer on all to pursue it. . . . It is 
because of what we believe about the end of 
the various loyalties that we are so glad of all 
the loyalties which make it possible to attain 
that end. The port gives value to the courses 
steering for it. . . . Except for our knowl- 
edge of the value of their destination, and of 

303 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

all life lived in quest of that destination, should 
we be anxious to urge all seekers along their 
courses ? . . . Loyalty is a relation. . . . Can 
we be loyal to anything, ultimately, except 
the universe which is the object of all love 
and all knowledge?" 

So far my friend's statement of his difficulty. 
As you will see, from these two closing lec- 
tures of my course which still remain, I cor- 
dially share my friend's objection to the 
definition of loyalty so far insisted upon in 
these lectures. Our definition of loyalty, and 
of its relation to the ultimate good which the 
loyal are seeking, has so far been inadequate. 
But, as I told you in the opening lecture, we 
deliberately began with an inadequate defi- 
nition of the nature of loyalty. We were 
obliged to do so. I expressly said this in my 
opening statement. Why we were obliged 
to do so, and why, thus far in these lectures, 
we have confined ourselves to developing and 
to illustrating the consequences of this im- 
perfect definition of loyalty, our closing lec- 
tures will of themselves, I hope, make clear. 

304 



LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 

A similar difficulty can be urged against any 
mere moralism, that is, against any purely 
ethical theory of the moral life. One wants 
a doctrine of the real world, or a religion, to 
help out one's ethics. For, as I have replied 
to my friend, morality, viewed by itself, has 
a character that can well be suggested by the 
parable of the talents. The moral life, re- 
garded simply as the moral life, is the ser- 
vice of a master who seems, to those who 
serve him, to have gone away into a far 
country. His servants have faith in him, but 
the service of his cause always has, for the 
moral, a certain mystery about it. They 
can indeed become sure, apart from any solu- 
tion of this mystery, that their own supreme 
personal good lies in serving their lord. For 
not otherwise can they find even the relative 
peace that lies in a service of duty. But 
those who serve are not thus altogether 
secured against a pessimism regarding the 
whole outcome of human endeavor. For if 
loyalty is indeed our best, may not even this 
best itself be a failure ? 

x 305 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



Or, to use further the similitude of the 
parable of the talents : It may be indeed our 
supreme good to serve the master who has 
gone into the far country. Yet we do not 
merely want to serve him ; we want, like Job, 
to meet him face to face. Suppose that we 
should discover the master to be indeed un- 
worthy or a phantom or a deceiver, would 
even this, our best good, the service of his 
cause, seem permanently valuable? Should 
we not say, some day : To serve him was our 
best chance of life; but after all even that 
service was vanity. 

In any case, our loyalty implies a faith in 
the master, —an assurance that life, at its best, 
is indeed worth while. Our philosophy of 
loyalty must therefore include an attempt 
to see the master of life himself, and to find 
out whether in truth he is, what our loyalty 
implies that he is, a master worth serving. 

To sum up: So far we have defined the 
moral life as loyalty, and have shown why 
the moral life is for us men the best life. 
But now we want to know what truth is 

306 



LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 



behind and beneath the moral life. With 
my friendly correspondent, we want to see 
the relation of loyalty to the real universe. 

II 

What must be true about the universe if 
even loyalty itself is a genuine good, and not 
a merely inevitable human illusion ? 

Well, loyalty is a service of causes. A 
cause, if it really is what our definition re- 
quires, links various human lives into the 
unity of one life. Therefore, if loyalty has 
any basis in truth, human lives can be linked 
in some genuine spiritual unity. Is such 
unity a fact, or is our belief in our causes a 
mere point of view, a pathetic fallacy ? Surely, 
if any man, however loyal, discovers that his 
cause is a dream, and that men remain as 
a fact sundered beings, not really linked by 
genuine spiritual ties, how can that man re- 
main loyal? Perhaps his supreme good in- 
deed lies in believing that such unities are 
real. But if this belief turns out to be an 

307 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



illusion, and if a man detects the illusion, can 
he any longer get the good out of loyalty ? 

And as for even this personal good that is 
to be got out of loyalty, we have all along 
seen that such good comes to a loyal man's 
mind in a very paradoxical way. A loyal 
man gets good, but since he gets it by believ- 
ing that his cause has a real existence outside 
of his private self, and is of itself a good 
thing, he gets the fascination of loyalty not 
as a private delight of his own, but as a ful- 
filment of himself through self-surrender to 
an externally existing good, — through a will- 
ing abandonment of the seeking of his own 
delight. And so the loyal man's good is 
essentially an anticipation of a good that he 
regards as not his own, but as existent in the 
cause. The cause, however, is itself no one 
fellow-man, and no mere collection of fellow- 
men. It is a family, a country, a church, or 
is such a rational union of many human minds 
and wills as we have in mind when we speak 
of a science or an art. Now, can such causes 
contain any good which is not simply a col- 

308 



LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 

lection of separate human experiences of 
pleasure or of satisfaction ? Thus, then, both 
the reality and the good of a loyal man's 
cause must be objects of the loyal man's 
belief in order that he should be able to get 
the experience of loyalty. And if his loyalty 
is indeed well founded, there must be unities 
of spiritual life in the universe such that no 
one man ever, by himself, experiences these 
unities as facts of his own consciousness. 
And these higher unities of life must possess 
a degree and a type of goodness, — a genuine 
value, such that no one man, and no mere 
collection of men, can ever exhaustively ex- 
perience this goodness, or become personally 
possessed of this value. 

How paradoxical a world, then, must the 
real world be, if the faith of the loyal is indeed 
well founded ! A spiritual unity of life, which 
transcends the individual experience of any 
man, must be real. For loyalty, as we have 
seen, is a service of causes that, from the 
human point of view, appear superpersonal. 
Loyalty holds these unities to be good. If 

309 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



loyalty is right, the real goodness of these 
causes is never completely manifested to any 
one man, or to any mere collection of men. 
Such goodness, then, if completely experienced 
at all, must be experienced upon some higher 
level of consciousness than any one human 
being ever reaches. If loyalty is right, social 
causes, social organizations, friendships, fam- 
ilies, countries, yes, humanity, as you see, 
must have the sort of unity of consciousness 
which individual human persons fragmen- 
tarily get, but must have this unity upon a 
higher level than that of our ordinary human 
individuality. 

Some such view, I say, must be held if we 
are to regard loyalty as in the end anything 
more than a convenient illusion. Loyalty 
has its metaphysical aspect. It is an effort to 
conceive human life in an essentially super- 
human way, to view our social organizations 
as actual personal unities of consciousness, 
unities wherein there exists an actual experi- 
ence of that good which, in our loyalty, we 
only partially apprehend. If the loyalty of 

310 



LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 

the lovers is indeed well founded in fact, then 
they, as separate individuals, do not constitute 
the whole truth. Their spiritual union also 
has a personal, a conscious existence, upon a 
higher than human level. An analogous unity 
of consciousness, an unity superhuman in 
grade, but intimately bound up with, and in- 
clusive of, our apparently separate personali- 
ties, must exist, if loyalty is well founded, 
wherever a real cause wins the true devotion of 
ourselves. Grant such an hypothesis, and 
then loyalty becomes no pathetic serving of a 
myth. The good which our causes possess, 
then, also becomes a concrete fact for an 
experience of a higher than human level. 
That union of self-sacrifice with self-assertion 
which loyalty expresses becomes a conscious- 
ness of our genuine relations to a higher social 
unity of consciousness in which we all have 
our being. For from this point of view we 
are, and we have our worth, by virtue of our 
relation to a consciousness of a type superior 
to the human type. And meanwhile the good 
of our loyalty is itself a perfectly concrete good, 

311 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

a good which is present to that higher experi- 
ence, wherein our cause is viewed in its truth, 
as a genuine unity of life. And because of 
this fact we can straightforwardly say: We 
are loyal not for the sake of the good that we 
privately get out of loyalty, but for the sake 
of the good that the cause — this higher unity 
of experience — gets out of this loyalty. Yet 
our loyalty gives us what is, after all, our 
supreme good, for it defines our true position 
in the world of that social will wherein we live 
and move and have our being. 

I doubt not that such a view of human life, 
— such an assertion that the social will is a 
concrete entity, just as real as we are, and of 
still a higher grade of reality than ourselves, — 
will seem to many of you mythical enough. 
Yet thus to view the unity of human life is, 
after all, a common tendency of the loyal. 
That fact I have illustrated in every lecture 
of this course. That such a view need not be 
mythical, that truth and reality can be con- 
ceived only in such terms as these, that our 
philosophy of loyalty is a rational part of a 

312 



LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 

philosophy which must view the whole world 
as one unity of consciousness, wherein count- 
less lesser unities are synthesized, — this is a 
general philosophical thesis which I must next 
briefly expound to you. 

Ill 

My exposition, as you see, must be, in any 
case, an attempt to show that the inevitable 
faith of the loyal — their faith in their causes, 
and in the real goodness of their causes — has 
truth, and since I must thus, in any case, dis- 
course of truth, I propose briefly to show you 
that whoever talks of any sort of truth what- 
ever, be that truth moral or scientific, the 
truth of common sense or the truth of a phi- 
losophy, inevitably implies, in all his asser- 
tions about truth, that the world of truth of 
which he speaks is a world possessing a 
rational and spiritual unity, is a conscious 
world of experience, whose type of conscious- 
ness is higher in its level than is the type of 
our human minds, but whose life is such that 
our life belongs as part to this living whole. 

313 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

This world of truth is the one that you must 
define, so I insist, if you are to regard any 
proposition whatever as true, and are then 
to tell, in a reasonable way, what you mean 
by the truth of that proposition. 

The world of truth is therefore essentially 
a world such as that in whose reality the loyal 
believe when they believe their cause to be 
real. Moreover, this truth world has a good- 
ness about it, essentially like that which the 
loyal attribute to their causes. Truth seek- 
ing and loyalty are therefore essentially the 
same process of life merely viewed in two 
different aspects. Whoever is loyal serves 
what he takes to be a truth, namely, his cause. 
On the other hand, whoever seeks truth for 
its own sake fails of his business if he seeks 
it merely as a barren abstraction, that has no 
life in it. If a truth seeker knows his busi- 
ness, he is, then, in the sense of our definition, 
serving a cause which unifies our human life 
upon some higher level of spiritual being than 
the present human level. He is therefore 
essentially loyal. Truth seeking is a moral 

314 



LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 

activity; and on the other hand, morality is 
wholly inadequate unless the light of eternal 
truth shines upon it. 

This, I say, will be my thesis. Some of 
you will call it very mystical, or at least a 
very fantastic thesis. It is not so. It ought 
to be viewed as a matter of plain sense. It is, 
I admit, a thesis which many of the most dis- 
tinguished amongst my colleagues, who are 
philosophers, nowadays view sometimes with 
amusement, and sometimes with a notable 
impatience. This way of regarding the world 
of truth, which I have just defined as mine, is 
especially and most vivaciously attacked by 
my good friends, the pragmatists, — a group 
of philosophers who have of late been dis- 
posed to take truth under their especial pro- 
tection, as if she were in danger from the 
tendency of some people who take her too 
seriously. 

When I mention pragmatism, I inevitably 
bring to your minds the name of one whom 
we all honor, — the philosopher who last year 
so persuasively stated, before the audience of 

315 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

this Institute, the pragmatist theory of philo- 
sophical method, and of the nature of truth. 
It is impossible for me to do any justice, within 
my limits, to the exposition which Professor 
James gave of his own theory of truth. Yet 
since the antithesis between his views and 
those which I have now to indicate to you 
may be in itself an aid to my own exposition, 
I beg you to'allow me to use, for the moment, 
some of his assertions about the nature of 
truth as a means of showing, by contrast, how 
I find myself obliged to interpret the same 
problem. The contrast is accompanied, after 
all, by so much of deeper agreement that I 
can well hope that my sketch of the current 
situation in the philosophical controversies 
about truth may not seem to you merely a 
dreary report of differences of opinion. 

Professor James, in discussing the nature 
of truth, in his recent book on pragmatism, 
begins, as some of you will remember, by 
accepting the classic definition of truth as 
the agreement of our ideas with reality. 
Whoever knows or possesses a truth has, 

316 



LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 

then, in his mind, an idea, an opinion, a judg- 
ment, or some complex of such states of 
mind. If his views are true, then these his 
ideas or opinions are in agreement with 
something called reality. Thus, for instance, 
if a loyal man believes his cause, say, his 
friendship or his club or his nation, to be a 
reality, and if his belief is true, his loyal opin- 
ion is in agreement with the real world. So 
far, of course, all of you will accept the defi- 
nition of truth here in question. 

Professor James now goes on to point out 
that, in some cases, our ideas agree with what 
we call real things by copying those things. 
So, if, with shut eyes, you think of the clock 
on the wall, your image of the clock is a copy 
of its dial. But, as my colleague continues, 
our power to copy real objects by ideas of our 
own is obviously a very limited power. You 
believe that you have at least some true ideas 
about many objects which are far too complex 
or too mysterious for you to copy them. Your 
power to become sure that your ideas do copy 
the constitution of anything whatever which 

317 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



exists outside of you is also very limited, be- 
cause, after all, you never get outside of your 
own experience to see what the real things 
would be if taken wholly in themselves. 
Hence, on the whole, one cannot say that the 
agreement of our ideas with reality which 
constitutes their truth is essentially such as to 
demand that our ideas should be copies. For 
we believe that we have true ideas even when 
we do not believe them to be copies. 

Moreover (and herewith we approach a 
consideration which is, for my colleague's 
theory of truth, very essential), not only 
does truth not consist merely in copying facts ; 
but also truth cannot be defined in terms of 
any other static or fixed relation between ideas 
and facts. The only way to conceive that 
agreement between ideas and facts which 
constitutes truth is to think of the "practical 
consequences" which follow from possessing 
true ideas. "True ideas," in Professor 
James's words, "lead us, namely, through the 
acts and other ideas which they instigate, into 
or up to or towards other parts of experience 

318 



LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 

with which we feel all the while that the orig- 
inal ideas remain in agreement. The con- 
nections and transitions come to us, from 
point to point, as being progressive, harmo- 
nious, satisfactory. This function of agree- 
able leading is what we mean by an idea's 
verification." So far my colleague's words. 
He goes on, in his account, to mention many 
illustrations of the way in which the truth of 
ideas is tested, both in the world of common 
sense, and in the world of science, by the use- 
fulness, by the success, which attaches to the 
following out of true ideas to their actual 
empirical consequences. The wanderer lost 
in the woods gets true ideas about his where- 
abouts whenever he hits upon experiences and 
ideas which set him following the path which 
actually leads him home. In science, hy- 
potheses are tested as to their truth, by con- 
sidering what experiences they lead us to 
anticipate, and by then seeing whether these 
anticipations can be fulfilled in a satisfactory 
way. "True," says Professor James, "is the 
name for whatever idea starts the verification 

319 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



process. 99 For instance, then, the verifiable 
scientific hypothesis, if once tested by the 
success of its results in experience, is in so far 
declared true. And similarly, the idea of 
following a given path in the woods in order 
to get home is declared true, if you follow the 
path and get home. 

In consequence, every true idea is such in 
so far as it is useful in enabling you to an- 
ticipate the sort of experience that you want ; 
and every idea that is useful as a guide of 
life is in so far true. The personal tests of 
usefulness, as of truth, are for every one of 
us personal and empirical. My own direct 
tests of truth are of course thus limited to my 
own experience. I find my own ideas true 
just in so far as I find them guiding me to the 
experience that I want to get. But of course, 
as my colleague constantly insists, we give 
credit, as social beings, to one another's veri- 
fications. Hence I regard as true many ideas 
that I personally have not followed out to any 
adequately experienced consequences. The 
"overwhelmingly large" number of the ideas 

320 



LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 

by which we live, "we let pass for true with* 
out attempting to verify." We do this, says 
Professor James, "because it works to do so, 
everything we know conspiring with the belief, 
and nothing interfering." That is, we regard 
as true those ideas which we personally find it 
convenient, successful, expedient to treat as 
verifiable, even though we never verify them. 
The warrant of these unverifiable truths is, 
however, once more, the empirical usefulness 
of living as if they were verifiable. "Truth 
lives," says Professor James, "for the most 
part on a credit system. . . . But this all 
points to direct face-to-face verification some- 
where, without which the fabric of truth col- 
lapses like a financial system with no cash 
basis whatever. You accept my verification 
of one thing, I yours of another. We trade 
on each other's truth. But beliefs verified 
concretely by somebody are the posts of the 
whole superstructure." The indirectly veri- 
fiable ideas, that is, the ideas which some- 
body else verifies, or even those which nobody 
yet verifies, but which agree sufficiently with 

t 321 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



verified ideas, we accept because it is advan- 
tageous to accept them. It is the same thing, 
then, to say that an idea is true because it is 
useful and to say that it is useful because it is 
true. 

Agreement with reality thus turns out, as 
my colleague insists, "to be an affair of lead- 
ing, — leading that is useful because it is into 
quarters that contain objects that are im- 
portant/' And my colleague's account of 
truth culminates in these notable expressions : 
"'The true/ to put it very briefly, is only the 
expedient in the way of our thinking, just as 
' the right 5 is only the expedient in the way of 
our behaving." "Pragmatism faces forward 
towards the future." That is, an idea is true 
by virtue of its expedient outcome. "It pays 
for our ideas to be validated, verified. Our 
obligation to seek truth is part of our general 
obligation to do w T hat pays. The payment 
true ideas bring are the sole why of our duty 
to follow them." 

The sum and substance of this theory of 
truth, as you see, is that the truth of an idea 

322 



LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 

is determined by its ' 'success'' in yielding 
what my colleague frequently calls " the cash 
values in terms of experience," which appear 
as consequences of holding this idea. These 
values may either take the form of direct 
verifications in terms of sensible facts, as 
when one finds one's way out of the woods 
and sees one's home; or else the form of 
practically satisfying and expedient beliefs, 
which clash with no sensible experience, and 
which are personally acceptable to those who 
hold them. It is "expedient" to connect the 
latter beliefs with sensible cash values when 
you can. If you cannot turn them into such 
cash, you are at liberty to hold them, but with 
the conviction that, after all, the personally 
expedient is the true. 

In any case, as you see, whatever else truth 
is, it is nothing static. It changes with the 
expediencies of your experience. And there- 
fore those who conceive the realm of truth as 
essentially eternal are the objects of my col- 
league's most charming philosophical fury. 



323 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



IV 

We have, then, an authoritative exposition of 
pragmatism before us. You must see that 
this doctrine, whether it be a true doctrine, 
or whether it be indeed simply for some 
people an expedient doctrine, is certainly one 
that concerns our philosophy of loyalty, now 
that indeed we have reached the place where 
the relation between loyalty and truth has 
become, for us, a critically important relation. 
May we venture to ask ourselves, then : Is 
this pragmatism a fair expression of what we 
mean by truth ? 

In reply let me at once point out the 
extent to which I personally agree with my 
colleague, and accept his theory of truth. 
I fully agree with him that whenever a man 
asserts a truth, his assertion is a deed, — a 
practical attitude, an active acknowledgment 
of some fact. I fully agree that the effort to 
verify this acknowledgment by one's own 
personal experience, and the attempt to find 
truth in the form of a practical congruity 

324 



LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 



between our assertions and our attained em- 
pirical results, is an effort which in our in- 
dividual lives inevitably accompanies and 
sustains our every undertaking in the cause 
of truth seeking. Modern pragmatism is not 
indeed as original as it seems to suppose itself 
to be in emphasizing such views. The whole 
history of modern idealism is full of such asser- 
tions. I myself, as a teacher of philosophy, 
have for years insisted upon viewing truth in 
this practical way. I must joyously confess 
to you that I was first taught to view the 
nature of truth in this way when I was a 
young student of philosophy; and I was 
taught this by several great masters of modern 
thought. These masters were Kant, Fichte, 
Hegel, and Professor James himself, whose 
lectures, as I heard them in my youth at the 
Johns Hopkins University, and whose beau- 
tiful conversations and letters in later years, 
inspired me with an insight that helped me, 
rather against his own advice, to read my 
German idealists aright, and to see what is, 
after all, the eternal truth beneath all this 

325 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



pragmatism. For Professor James's prag- 
matism, despite its entertaining expressions 
of horror of the eternal, actually does state 
one aspect of eternal truth. It is, namely, 
eternally true that all search for truth is a 
practical activity, with an ethical purpose, 
and that a purely theoretical truth, such as 
should guide no significant active process, is a 
barren absurdity. This, however, is so far 
precisely what Fichte spent his life in teach- 
ing. Professor James taught me, as a stu- 
dent, much the same lesson ; and I equally 
prize and honor all of my masters for that 
lesson ; and I have been trying to live up to it 
ever since I first began to study the nature of 
truth. 

So far, then, I am a pragmatist. And I 
also fully agree that, if we ever get truth, the 
attainment of truth means a living and prac- 
tical success in those active undertakings in 
terms of which we have been trying to assert 
and to verify our truth. I doubt not that 
to say, "This is true," is the same as to say: 
"The ideas by means of which I define this 

326 



LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 



truth are the practically and genuinely sue* 
cessful ideas, the ideas such that, when I fol- 
low them, I really fulfil my deepest needs." 
All this I not only admit; but I earnestly 
insist that truth is an ethical concept; and I 
thank from my heart the great pragmatist 
who so fascinated his audience last year in 
this place; I thank him that he taught them 
what, in my youth, he helped to teach me, 
namely, that winning the truth means winning 
the success which we need, and for which the 
whole practical nature of our common hu- 
manity continually groans and travails to- 
gether in pain until now. 

And yet, and yet all this still leaves open one 
great question, When we seek truth, we 
indeed seek successful ideas. But what, in 
Heaven's name, constitutes success ? Truth- 
seeking is indeed a practical endeavor. But 
what, in the name of all the loyal, is the 
goal of human endeavor ? Truth is a living 
thing. We want leading and guidance. 
"Lead, kindly light, " — thus we address the 
truth. We are lost in the woods of time. 

327 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



We want the way, the truth, and the life. 
For nothing else does all our science and 
our common sense strive. But what is it to 
have genuine abundance of life? For what 
do we live ? 

V 

Here our entire philosophy of loyalty, so far 
as it has yet been developed, comes to our aid. 
The loyal, as we have said, are the only human 
beings who can have any reasonable hope of 
genuine success. If they do not succeed, then 
nobody succeeds. And of course the loyal 
do indeed live with a constant, although not 
with an exclusive, reference to their own 
personal experience and to that of other in- 
dividual men. They feel their present fas- 
cination for their cause. It thrills through 
them. Their loyalty has, even for them, in 
their individual capacity what Professor James 
calls a cash value. And of course they like 
to have their friends share such cash values. 
Yet I ask you : Are the loyal seeking only the 
mere collection of their private experiences 

328 



LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 

of their personal thrills of fascination ? If 
you hear loyal men say: "We are in this 
business just for what we as individuals — we 
and our individual fellows — can get out of it/' 
do you regard that way of speech as an ade- 
quate expression of their really loyal spirit ? 
When Arnold von Winkelried rushed on the 
Austrian spears, did he naturally say: "Look 
you, my friends, I seek, in experiential terms, 
the cash value of my devotion ; see me 
draw the cash." My colleague would of 
course retort that the hero in question, accord- 
ing to the legend, said, as he died: "Make 
way for liberty." He therefore wanted lib- 
erty, as one may insist, to get these cash values. 
Yes, but liberty was no individual man, and 
no mere heap of individual men. Liberty 
was a cause, a certain superhuman unity of 
the ideal life of a free community. It was 
indeed expedient that one man should die for 
the people. But the people also was an unio 
mystica of many in one. For that cause the 
hero died. And no man has ever yet experi- 
enced, in his private and individual life, the 

329 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

whole true cash value of that higher unity* 
Nor will all the individual Swiss patriots, past, 
present, or future, viewed as a mere collec- 
tion of creatures of a day, ever draw the cash 
in question. If the cause exists, the treasure 
exists, and is indeed a cash value upon a level 
higher than that of our passing human life. 
But loyalty does not live by selling its goods 
for present cash in the temple of its cause. 
Such pragmatism it drives out of the temple. 
It serves, and worships, and says to the cause : 
"Be thine the glory." 

Loyalty, then, seeks success and from mo- 
ment to moment indeed thrills with a purely 
fragmentary and temporary joy in its love of 
its service. But the joy depends on a belief 
in a distinctly superhuman type of unity of 
life. And so you indeed cannot express the 
value of your loyalty by pointing at the mere 
heap of the joyous thrills of the various loyal 
individuals. The loyal serve a real whole of 
life, an experiential value too rich for any ex- 
pression in merely momentary terms. 

Now, is it not very much so with our love of 

330 



LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 

any kind of truth ? Of course, we mortals 
seek for whatever verification of our truths 
we can get in the form of present success. 
But can you express our human definition of 
truth in terms of any collection of our human 
experiences of personal expediency? 

Well, as to our concept of truth, let us con- 
sider a test case by way of helping ourselves 
to answer this question. Let us suppose that 
a witness appears, upon some witness-stand, 
and objects to taking the ordinary oath, be- 
cause he has conscientious scruples, due to 
the fact that he is a recent pragmatist, who 
has a fine new definition of truth, in terms of 
which alone he can be sworn. Let us suppose 
him, hereupon, to be granted entire liberty 
to express his oath in his own way. Let him 
accordingly say, using, with technical scrupu- 
losity, my colleague's definition of truth: "I 
promise to tell whatever is expedient and 
nothing but what is expedient, so help me fu- 
ture experience/' I ask you: Do you think 
that this witness has expressed, with adequacy, 
that view of the nature of truth that you really 

331 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



wish a witness to have in mind ? Of course, 
if he were a typical pragmatist, you would in- 
deed be delighted to hear his testimony on the 
witness-stand or anywhere else. But would 
you accept his formula? 

But let me be more precise as to the topic 
of this witness's possible testimony. I will 
use for the purpose Kant's famous case. 
Somebody, now dead, let us suppose, has 
actually left with the witness a sum of money 
as a wholly secret deposit to be some time 
returned. No written record was made of the 
transaction. No evidence exists that can in 
future be used to refute the witness if he denies 
the transaction and keeps the money. The 
questions to be asked of the witness relate, 
amongst other things, to whatever it may be 
that he believes himself to know about the 
estate of the deceased. I now ask, not what 
his duty is, but simply what it is that he ra- 
tionally means to do in case he really intends 
to tell the truth about that deposit. Does 
he take merely the "forward-looking" atti- 
tude of my colleague's pragmatism? Does 

332 



LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 

he mean merely to predict, as expedient, cer- 
tain consequences which he expects to result 
either to himself or to the heirs of the estate ? 
Of course his testimony will have consequences. 
But is it these which he is trying to predict? 
Are they his true object ? Or does the truth 
of his statement mean the same as the expe- 
diency, either to himself or to the heirs, of any 
consequences whatever which may follow from 
his statement? Does the truth of his state- 
ment about the deposit even mean the merely 
present empirical fact that he now feels a belief 
in this statement or that he finds it just now 
congruent with the empirical sequences of his 
present memories ? No, for the witness is not 
trying merely to tell how he feels. He is try- 
ing to tell the truth about the deposit. And the 
witness's belief is not the truth of his belief. 
Even his memory is not the truth to which he 
means to be a witness. And the future con- 
sequences of his making a true statement are 
for the witness irrelevant, since they are for 
the law and the heirs to determine. Yet one 
means something perfectly definite by the 

333 



THE PHILOSOPHY OP LOYALTY 



truth of the testimony of that witness. And 
that truth is simply inexpressible in such terms 
as those which my colleague employs. Yet the 
truth here in question is a simple truth about 
the witness's own personal past experience. 

Now, such a case is only one of countless 
cases where we are trying to tell the truth 
about something which we all regard as being, 
in itself, a matter of genuine and concrete 
experience, while nevertheless we do not mean, 
"It is expedient just now for me to think this," 
nor yet, "I predict such and such consequences 
for my own personal experience, or for the 
future experience of some other individual 
man; and these predicted consequences con- 
stitute the truth of my present assertion." 
I say there are countless such cases where the 
truth that we mean is empirical indeed, but 
transcends all such expediencies and personal 
consequences. The very assertion, "Human 
experience, taken as a totality of facts, exists," 
is a momentous example of just such an asser- 
tion. We all believe that assertion. If that 
assertion is not actually true, then our whole 

334 



LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 

frame of natural science, founded as it is on the 
common experience of many observers, crum- 
bles into dust, our common sense world is 
nothing, business and society are alike illu- 
sions, loyalty to causes is meaningless. Now 
that assertion, "Human experience, that is, 
the totality of the experiences of many men, 
really exists," is an assertion which you and I 
regard as perfectly true. Yet no individual 
man ever has verified, or ever will verify, that 
assertion. For no man, taken as this indi- 
vidual man, experiences the experience of any- 
body but himself. Yet we all regard that as- 
sertion as true. 

My colleague, of course, would say, as in fact 
he has often said, that his assertion is one of 
the numerous instances of that process of 
trading on credit which he so freely illustrates. 
We do not verify this assertion. But we 
accept it on credit as verifiable. However, 
the credit simile is a dangerous one here, so 
long as one conceives that the verification 
which would pay the cash would be a payment 
in the form of such human experience as 

335 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

you and I possess. For the assertion, "The 
experience of many men exists/' is an assertion 
that is essentially un verifiable by any one man. 
If the "cash value" of the assertion means, 
then, its verifiability by any man, then the 
credit in question is one that simply cannot 
be turned into such cash by any conceivable 
process, occurring in our individual lives, 
since the very idea of the real existence of 
the experience of many men excludes, by its 
definition, the direct presence of this experience 
of various men within the experience of any 
one of these men. The credit value in ques- 
tion would thus be a mere fiat value, so long 
as the only cash values are those of the expe- 
riences of individual men, and the truth of 
our assertion would mean simply that we find 
it expedient to treat as verifiable what we 
know cannot be verified. Hereupon, of course, 
we should simply be trading upon currency 
that has no cash value. Whoever does verify 
the fact that the experience of many men 
exists, if such a verifier there be, is a super- 
human being, an union of the empirical lives 

336 



LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 



of many men in the complex of a single expe- 
rience. And if our credit of the assertion that 
many men exist is convertible into cash at all, 
that cash is not laid up where the moth and 
rust of our private human experience doth from 
moment to moment corrupt the very data that 
we see; but is laid up in a realm where our 
experiences, past, present, future, are the ob- 
ject of a conspectus that is not merely temporal 
and transient. Now all the natural sciences 
make use of the persuasion that the experiences 
of various men exist, and that there is a unity 
of such experiences. This thesis, then, is no 
invention of philosophers. 

My colleague, in answer, would of course 
insist that as a fact you and I are now believing 
that many men exist, and that human experi- 
ence in its entirety exists, merely because, in the 
long run, we find that this belief is indeed 
congruous with our current and purely per- 
sonal experience, and is therefore an expedi- 
ent idea of ours. But I, in answer, insist that 
common sense well feels this belief to be indeed 
from moment to moment expedient, and yet 

z 337 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

clearly distinguishes between that expediency 
and the truth which common sense all the while 
attributes to the belief. The distinction is pre- 
cisely the one which my fancied illustration of 
the pragmatist on the witness-stand has sug- 
gested. It is a perfectly universal distinction 
and a commonplace one. Tell me, "This 
opinion is true/' and whatever you are talking 
about I may agree or disagree or doubt; yet 
in any case you have stated a momentous issue. 
But tell me, "I just now find this belief 
expedient, it feels to me congruous" and you 
have explicitly given me just a scrap of your 
personal biography, and have told me no other 
truth whatever than a truth about the present 
state of your feelings. 

If, however, you emphasize my colleague's 
wording to the effect that a truth is such because 
it proves to be an idea that is expedient "in 
the long run," I once more ask you: When 
does a man experience the whole of the real 
facts about the "long run"? At the begin- 
ning of the long run, when the end is not yet, 
or at the end, when, perhaps, he forgets, like 

338 



LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 

many older men, what were once the expe- 
diencies of his youth ? What decides the truth 
about the long run ? My exalted moments, 
when anything that I like seems true, or my 
disappointed moments, when I declare that I 
have always had bad luck? To appeal to 
the genuinely real "long run" is only to appeal 
in still another form to a certain ideally fair 
conspectus of my own whole life, — a conspec- 
tus which I, in my private human experience, 
never get. Whoever gets the conspectus of 
my whole life, to see what, in the long run, is 
indeed for me expedient, — whoever, I say, 
gets that conspectus, if such a being there indeed 
is, — is essentially superhuman in his type of 
consciousness. For he sees what I only get 
in the form of an idea ; namely, the true sense 
and meaning of my life. 

In vain, then, does one try adequately to de- 
fine the whole of what we mean by truth either 
in terms of our human feelings of expediency 
or in terms of our instantaneous thrills of joy 
in success, or in terms of any other verifications 
that crumble as the instant flies. All such 

339 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

verifications we use, just as we use whatever 
perishes. Any such object is a fragment, but 
we want the whole. Truth is itself a cause, 
and is largely as one must admit, for us mortals, 
just now, what we called, in our last lecture, 
a lost cause — else how should these prag- 
matists be able thus to imagine a vain thing, 
and call that truth which is but the crumbling 
expediency of the moment ? Our search for 
truth is indeed a practical process. The 
attainment of truth means success. Our veri- 
fications, so far as we ever get them, are mo- 
mentary fragments of that success. But the 
genuine success that we demand is an ethical 
success, of precisely the type which all the 
loyal seek, when they rejoice in giving all for 
their cause. 

VI 

But you will now all the more eagerly de- 
mand in what sense we can ever get any war- 
rant for saying that we know any truth what- 
ever. In seeking truth we do not seek the mere 
crumbling successes of the passing instants 
of human life. We seek a city out of sight. 

340 



LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 

What we get of success within our passing 
experience is rationally as precious to us as it is, 
just because we believe that attainment to be 
a fragment of an essentially superhuman suc- 
cess, which is won in the form of a higher expe- 
rience than ours, — a conspectus wherein our 
human experiences are unified. But what 
warrant have we for this belief? 

I will tell you how I view the case. We 
need unity of life. In recognizing that need 
my own pragmatism consists. Now, we never 
find unity present to our human experience in 
more than a fragmentary shape. We get 
hints of higher unity. But only the frag- 
mentary unity is won at any moment of our 
lives. We therefore form ideas — very fallible 
ideas — of some unity of experience, an unity 
such as our idea of any science or any art or 
any united people or of any community or of 
any other cause, any other union of many hu- 
man experiences in one, defines. Now, if our 
ideas are in any case indeed true, then such an 
unity is as a fact successfully experienced upon 
some higher level than ours, and is experienced 

341 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

in some conspectus of life which wins what we 
need, which approves our loyalty, which fulfils 
our rational will, and which has in its whole- 
ness what we seek. And then we ourselves 
with all our ideas and strivings are in and of 
this higher unity of life. Our loyalty to truth 
is a hint of this unity. Our transient successes 
are fragments of the true success. But sup- 
pose our ideas about the structure of this higher 
unity to be false in any of their details. Sup- 
pose, namely, any of our causes to be wrongly 
viewed by us. Then there is still real that 
state of facts, whatever it is, which, if just now 
known to us, would show us this falsity of 
our various special ideas. Now, only an expe- 
rience, a consciousness of some system of con- 
tents, could show the falsity of any idea. Hence 
this real state of facts, this constitution of the 
genuine universe, whatever it is, must again be 
a reality precisely in so far as it is also a con- 
spectus of facts of experience. 

We therefore already possess at least one 
true idea, precisely in so far as we say: "The 
facts of- the world are what they are; the real 

342 



LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 

universe exposes our errors and makes them 
errors. " And when we say this, we once more 
appeal to a conspectus of experience in which 
ours is included. For I am in error only in 
case my present ideas about the true facts 
of the w r hole world of experience are out of 
concord with the very meaning that I myself 
actively try to assign to these ideas. My ideas 
are in any detail false, only if the very expe- 
rience to which I mean to appeal, contains in 
its conspectus contents which I just now im- 
perfectly conceive. In any case, then, the 
truth is possessed by precisely that whole of 
experience which I never get, but to which 
my colleague also inevitably appeals when he 
talks of the "long run," or of the experiences 
of humanity in general. 

Whatever the truth, then, or the falsity of 
any of my special convictions about this or that 
fact may be, the real world, which refutes my 
false present ideas in so far as they clash with 
its wholeness, and which confirms them just 
in so far as they succeed in having significant 
relations to its unity, — this real world, I say, 

343 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

is a conspectus of the whole of experience. 
And this whole of experience is in the closest 
real relation to my practical life, precisely in 
so far as, for me, the purpose of my life is to 
get into unity with the whole universe, and pre- 
cisely in so far as the universe itself is just that 
conspectus of experience that we all mean to 
define and to serve whatever we do, or what- 
ever we say. 

But the real whole conspectus of experience, 
the real view of the totality of life, the real 
expression of that will to live in and for the 
whole, which every assertion of truth and every 
loyal deed expresses — well, it must be a con- 
spectus that includes whatever facts are indeed 
facts, be they past, present, or future. I call 
this whole of experience an eternal truth. I do 
not thereby mean, as my colleague seems to 
imagine, that the eternal first exists, and that 
then our life in time comes and copies that 
eternal order. I mean simply that the whole 
of experience includes all temporal happenings, 
contains within itself all changes, and, since 
it is the one whole that we all want and need, 

344 



LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 



succeeds in so far as it supplements all failures, 
accepts all, even the blindest of services, and 
wins what we seek. Thus winning it is prac- 
tically good and worthy. 

But if one insists, How do you know all 
this ? I reply : I know simply that to try to 
deny the reality of this whole of truth is simply 
to reaffirm it. Any special idea of mine may 
be wrong, even as any loyal deed may fail, or 
as any cause may become, to human vision, a 
lost cause. But to deny that there is truth, 
or that there is a real world, is simply to say 
that the whole truth is that there is no whole 
truth, and that the real fact is that there is 
no fact real at all. Such assertions are plain 
self-contradictions. And on the other hand, by 
the term "real world, " defined as it is for us by 
our ideal needs, we mean simply that whole of 
experience in which we live, and in unity with 
which we alone succeed. 

Loyalty, then, has its own metaphysic. 
This metaphysic is expressed in a view of 
things which conceives our experience as bound 
up in a real unity with all experience, — an 

345 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



unity which is essentially good, and in which 
all our ideas possess their real fulfilment and 
success. Such a view is true, simply because 
if you deny its truth you reaffirm that very 
truth under a new form. 

Truth, meanwhile, means, as pragmatism 
asserts, the fulfilment of a need. But we all 
need the superhuman, the city out of sight, the 
union with all life, — the essentially eternal. 
This need is no invention of the philosophers. 
It is the need which all the loyal feel, whether 
they know it or not, and whether they call 
themselves pragmatists or not. To define this 
need as pragmatism in its recent forms has 
done, to reduce truth to expediency, is to go 
about crying cash, cash, in a realm where there 
is no cash of the sort that loyalty demands, 
that every scientific inquiry presupposes, and 
that only the unity of the experiences of many 
in one furnishes. 

If we must, then, conceive recent pragmatism 
under the figure of a business enterprise, — a 
metaphor which my colleague's phraseology 
so insistently invites, — I am constrained there- 

346 



LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY 

fore to sum up its position thus : First, with 
a winning clearness, and with a most honor- 
able frankness it confesses bankruptcy, so 
far as the actually needed cash payments of 
significant truth are concerned. Secondly, 
it nevertheless declines to go into the hands 
of any real receiver, for it is not fond of any- 
thing that appears too absolute. And thirdly, 
it proposes simply and openly to go on doing 
business under the old style and title of the 
truth. "After all," it says, "are we not, every 
one of us, fond of credit values?" 

But I cannot conceive the position of the 
loyal to be, in fact, so hopelessly embarrassed 
as this. The recent pragmatists themselves 
are, in fact, practically considered very loyal 
lovers of genuine truth. They simply have 
mistaken the true state of their accounts. We 
all know, indeed, little enough. But the loyal 
man, I think, whether he imagines himself 
to be a recent pragmatist or not, has a ra- 
tional right to say this : My cause partakes 
of the nature of the only truth and reality that 
there is. My life is an effort to manifest such 

347 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



eternal truth, as well as I can, in a series of 
temporal deeds. I may serve my cause ill. 
I may conceive it erroneously. I may lose it 
in the thicket of this world of transient expe- 
rience. My every human deed may involve 
a blunder. My mortal life may seem one 
long series of failures. But I know that my 
cause liveth. My true life is hid with the 
cause and belongs to the eternal. 



848 



VIII 

LOYALTY AND RELIGION 



LECTURE VIII 



LOYALTY AND RELIGION 

WE began these lectures with a confessedly 
inadequate definition of loyalty. At the 
last time we laid a basis for a new definition of 
loyalty. In this concluding lecture, we are to 
develop that definition, and to draw conclusions 
regarding the relation of loyalty to religion. 
Both enterprises will require a further develop- 
ment of our theory of truth. 

I 

Loyalty, so we said at the outset, is the will- 
ing and thoroughgoing devotion of a person 
to a cause. We defined a cause as something 
that unifies many human lives in one. Our 
intent in making these definitions was mainly 
practical. Our philosophy of loyalty was and 
is intended to be a practical philosophy. We 
used our definition first to help us to find out 

351 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

the purpose of life, and the supreme good which 
human beings can seek for themselves. We 
found this good to be, indeed, of a paradoxical 
seeming. It was a good found only by an act 
of sacrifice. We then developed the concep- 
tion of loyalty to loyalty, and learned that, 
with this means of defining the one cause which 
is worthy of all men's devotion, we could unify 
and simplify the chaotic code of our conven- 
tional morality, could do full justice to the 
demands of a rational ethical individualism, 
and could leave to every man his right and his 
duty to choose some special personal cause of 
his own, while we could yet state the ideal of 
a harmony of all human causes in one all-em- 
bracing cause. Upon this basis we also could 
form a theory of conscience, — a theory which 
views conscience at once as rational and uni- 
versal in its authority, and yet as individual 
in its expression in the life of each man, so 
that every man's conscience remains his own, 
and is, to himself, in many ways, mysterious; 
while the whole business of any man's conscience 
is, nevertheless, to direct that man to find his 

352 



LOYALTY AND RELIGION 



individual place in the one, universal, rational, 
moral order. 

Hereupon we illustrated our theory of loyalty 
by applying it to a study of some of our own 
national problems. And next, our account 
of the practice of loyalty culminated in a doc- 
trine of the nature of training for loyalty. 
Here we found the great paradox of loyalty 
afresh illustrated. Loyalty wins not only by 
sacrifice, but also by painful labor, and by the 
very agony of defeat. In this our human world 
the lost causes have proved themselves, in 
history, to be the most fruitful causes. In 
sum, loyalty is trained both through the pres- 
ence of personal leaders, and through that 
idealization of our causes which adversity 
nourishes, which death illumines, and which 
the defeats of present time may render all the 
clearer and more ideally fascinating. 

All these results showed us that loyalty has 
about it a character such as forbids us, after 
all, to interpret the true good of loyalty in terms 
of our merely individual human experiences. 
Man discovers, indeed, even within the limits 

2 a 353 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

of his own personal experience, that loyalty 
is his ethical destiny, and that without it he 
can win no peace ; while, with loyalty once in 
possession of his active powers, he seems to 
himself to have solved the personal problem 
of the purpose of his life. But loyalty thus 
appears, after all, in the individual life, in a 
deeply mysterious form. It says to a man: 
"Your true good can never be won and veri- 
fied by you in terms to which the present form 
and scope of our human experience is adequate. 
The best that you can get lies in self -surrender, 
and in your personal assurance that the cause 
to which you surrender yourself is indeed good. 
But your cause, if it is indeed a reality, has a 
good about it which no one man, and no mere 
collection of men, can ever verify. This good 
of the cause is essentially superhuman in its 
type, even while it is human in its embodiment. 
For it belongs to an union of men, to a whole of 
human life which transcends the individuality 
of any man, and which is not to be found as 
something belonging to any mere collection of 
men. Let your supreme good, then, be this, 

354 



LOYALTY AND RELIGION 



that you regard the cause as real, as good, and 
that, if the cause be lost to any merely human 
sight, you hold it to be nevertheless living in 
its own realm, — not apart, indeed, from human 
life, but in the form of the fulfilment of many 
human lives in one." 

Now, this mysterious speech of loyalty im- 
plies something which is not only moral, but 
also metaphysical . Purely practical considera- 
tions, then, a study of our human needs, an 
ideal of the business of life, — these inevi- 
tably lead us into a region which is more than 
merely a realm of moral activities. This 
region is either one of delusions or else one of 
spiritual realities of a level higher than is 
that of our present individual human expe- 
rience. 

In the last lecture we undertook to consider 
this larger realm of spiritual unities which 
must be real in case our loyalty is not based 
upon illusion. And we attempted to sketch 
a general theory of truth which might show us 
that such spiritual unities are indeed realities, 
and are presupposed by our every effort to 

355 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



define truth. Thus our ethical theory has 
transformed itself into a general philosophical 
doctrine; and loyalty now appears to us not 
only as a guide of life but as a revelation of our 
relation to a realm which we have been obliged 
to define as one of an eternal and all-embracing 
unity of spiritual life. 

We have called this realm of true life, and of 
genuine and united experience, — this realm 
which, if our argument at the last time was 
sound, includes our lives in that very whole 
which constitutes the real universe, — we have 
called this realm, I say, an eternal world, — 
eternal, simply because, according to our 
theory, it includes all temporal happenings 
and strivings in the conspectus of a single con- 
sciousness, and fulfils all our rational purposes 
together, and is all that we seek to be. For, 
as we argued, this realm of reality is conscious, 
is united, is self-possessed, and is perfected 
through the very wealth of the ideal sacrifices 
and of the loyal devotion which are united so 
as to constitute its fulness of being. In view 
of the philosophy that was thus sketched, I 

356 



LOYALTY AND RELIGION 



now propose a new definition of loyalty ; and 
I say that this definition results from all of our 
previous study : Loyalty is the will to manifest, 
so far as is "possible, the Eternal, that is, the 
conscious and superhuman unity of life, in 
the form of the acts of an individual Self. Or, 
if you prefer to take the point of view of an 
individual human self, if you persist in looking 
at the world just as we find it in our ordinary 
experience, and if you regard the metaphysical 
doctrine just sketched merely as an ideal theory 
of life, and not as a demonstrable philosophy, 
I can still hold to my definition of loyalty 
by borrowing a famous phrase from the dear 
friend and colleague some of whose views I 
at the last time opposed. I can, then, simply 
state my new definition of loyalty in plainer 
and more directly obvious terms thus : Loyalty 
is the Will to Believe in something eternal, and 
to express that belief in the practical life of 
a human being. 

This, I say, is my new definition of loyalty, 
and in its metaphysical form, it is my final 
definition. Let me expound it further, and 

357 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



let me show a little more in detail how it re- 
sults from the whole course of our inquiry. 

II 

However kindly you may have followed the 
discussion of my last lecture, some of you will 
feel doubts as to the theory of truth and of 
reality which I opposed to the doctrines of 
recent pragmatism, and which I now lay at 
the basis of my final definition of loyalty. I 
approached my own theory by the way of a 
polemic against my colleague's recently stated 
views regarding the nature of truth. But 
polemic often hinders our appreciation of some 
aspects of the questions at issue, even while it 
may help us to emphasize others. So let me 
now point out, apart from a polemic against 
other theories of truth, what is my main mo- 
tive for viewing the real world as I do, and why 
I suppose that viewing the world as I do helps 
us to understand better the business of loyalty. 

People who have faith in this or in that form 
of superhuman and significant reality often 
ask what they can do to turn their faith into 

358 



LOYALTY AND RELIGION 



something that more resembles clear insight. 
Shall they look into the evidences that are 
adduced in favor of this or of that miraculous 
story? Shall they themselves seek for the 
miraculous in their own personal experience ? 
Will psychical research throw any light on the 
mysteries of being? Or, perhaps, will some 
sort of special mystical training reveal the 
higher truth? What is the way that leads 
towards the spiritual world ? And thus those 
who doubt whether there are such higher reali- 
ties to be found still sometimes try to get rid 
of these doubts by various appeals either to 
more or less magical arts, or to extraordinary 
personal experiences, or to mystical transforma- 
tions of their personal life. 

Now, whatever may be said of wonders, or of 
mystical revelations, our philosophy of loyalty 
is naturally interested in pointing out a road to 
the spiritual world, if, indeed, there be such a 
world, — a road, I say, which has a plain rela- 
tion to our everyday moral life. And it seems 
to me, both that there is a genuinely spiritual 
world, and that there is a path of inquiry which 

359 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



can lead from such a practical faith in the 
higher world as loyalty embodies in its deeds, 
to a rational insight into the general constitu- 
tion of this higher realm. I do not offer my 
opinions upon this subject as having any 
authority. I can see no farther through stone 
walls than can my fellow, and I enjoy no special 
revelations from any superhuman realm. But 
I ask you, as thoughtful people, to consider 
what your ordinary life, as rational beings, 
implies as its basis and as its truth. 

What I was expounding at the close of my 
last lecture was a view of things which seems 
to me to be implied in any attempt to express, 
in a reasonable way, where we stand in our 
universe. 

We all of us have to admit, I think, that our 
daily life depends upon believing in realities 
which are, in any case, just as truly beyond 
the scope of our ordinary individual experience 
as any spiritual realm could possibly be. We 
live by believing in one another's minds as 
realities. We give credit to countless reports, 
documents, and other evidences of present 

360 



LOYALTY AND RELIGION 

and past facts ; and we do all this, knowing 
that such credit cannot be adequately verified 
by any experience such as an individual man 
can obtain. Now, the usual traditional ac- 
count of all these beliefs of ours is that they 
are forced upon us, by some reality which is, 
as people say, wholly independent of our 
knowledge, which exists by itself apart from 
our experience, and which may be, therefore, 
entirely alien in its nature to any of our human 
interests and ideals. 

But modern philosophy, — a philosophy in 
whose historical course of development our 
recent pragmatism is only a passing incident, — 
that philosophy which turns upon analyzing the 
bases of our knowledge, and upon reflectively 
considering what our human beliefs and ideas 
are intended to mean and to accomplish, 
has taught us to see that we can never deal with 
any wholly independent reality. The recent 
pragmatists, as I understand them, are here 
in full and conscious agreement with my own 
opinion. We can deal with no world which is 
out of relation to our experience. On the con- 

361 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

trary, the real world is known to us in terms 
of our experience, is defined for us by our 
ideas, and is the object of our practical endeav- 
ors. Meanwhile, to declare anything real 
is to assert that it has its place in some realm 
of experience, be this experience human or 
superhuman. To declare that anything what- 
ever is a fact, is simply to assert that some prop- 
osition, which you or I or some other think- 
ing being can express in the form of intelligible 
ideas, is a true proposition. And the truth 
of propositions itself is nothing dead, is 
nothing independent of ideas and of expe- 
rience, but is simply the successful fulfilment 
of some demand, — a demand which you can 
express in the form of an assertion, and which 
is fulfilled in so far, and onlv in so far, as some 
region of live experience contains what meets 
that demand. Meanwhile, every proposition, 
every assertion that anybody can make, is a 
deed; and every rational deed involves, in 
effect, an assertion of a fact. If the prodigal 
son says, "I will arise and go to my father," 
he even thereby asserts something to be true 

362 



LOYALTY AND RELIGION 

about himself, his father, and his father's 
house. If an astronomer or a chemist or a 
statistician or a man of business reports "this 
or this is a fact/' he even thereby performs a 
deed, — an act having an ideal meaning, and 
embodying a live purpose; and he further 
declares that the constitution of experience is 
such as to make this deed essentially reason- 
able, successful, and worthy to be accepted 
by every man. 

The real world is therefore not something 
independent of us. It is a world whose stuff, 
so to speak, — whose content, — is of the nature 
of experience, whose structure meets, validates, 
and gives warrant to our active deeds, and 
whose whole nature is such that it can be inter- 
preted in terms of ideas? propositions, and 
conscious meanings, while in turn it gives to 
our fragmentary ideas and to our conscious 
life whatever connected meaning they possess. 
Whenever I have purposes and fail, so far, 
to carry them out, that is because I have not 
yet found the true way of expressing my own 
relation to reality. On the other hand, pre- 

363 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



cisely in so far as I have understood some 
whole of reality, I have carried out successfully 
some purpose of mine. 

There is, then, no merely theoretical truth, 
and there is no reality foreign, in its nature, 
to experience. Whoever actually lives the 
whole conscious life such as can be lived out 
with a definitely reasonable meaning, — such 
a being, obviously superhuman in his grade of 
consciousness, not only knows the real world, 
but is the real world. Whoever is conscious 
of the whole content of experience possesses 
all reality. And our search for reality is 
simply an effort to discover what the whole 
fabric of experience is into which our human 
experience is woven, what the system of truth 
is in which our partial truths have their place, 
what the ideally significant life is for the sake 
of which every deed of ours is undertaken. 
When we try to find out what the real world is, 
we are simply trying to discover the sense of 
our own individual lives. And we can define 
that sense of our lives only in terms of a con- 
scious life in which ours is included, in which 

364 



LOYALTY AND RELIGION 



our ideas get their full meaning expressed, and 
in which what we fail to carry out to the full 
is carried out to the full. 

Ill 

Otherwise stated, when I think of the whole 
world of facts, — the "real world," — I inevi- 
tably think of something that is my own world, 
precisely in so far as that world is any object 
of any reasonable idea of mine. It is true, of 
course, that, in forming an idea of my world of 
facts, I do not thereby give myself, at this in- 
stant, the least right to spin out of my inner 
consciousness any adequate present ideas of 
the detail of the contents of my real world. 
In thinking of the real world, I am indeed think- 
ing of the whole of that very system of expe- 
rience in which my experience is bound up, 
and in which I, as an individual, have my 
very limited and narrow place. But just now 
I am not in possession of that whole. I have 
to work for it and wait for it, and faithfully to 
be true to it. As a creature living along, from 
moment to moment, in time, I therefore indeed 

365 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



have to wait ignorantly enough for coming 
experience. I have to use as I can my fallible 
memory in trying to find out about my own 
past experience. I have no way of verifying 
what your experience is, except by using tests 
— and again the extremely fallible tests — 
which we all employ in our social life. I need 
the methods of the sciences of experience to 
guide me in the study of whatever facts fall 
within their scope. I use those practical and 
momentary successes upon which recent prag- 
matism insists, whenever I try to get a concrete 
verification of my opinions. And so far I 
stand, and must rightly stand, exactly where 
any man of common sense, any student of a 
science, any plain man, or any learned man 
stands. I am a fallible mortal, simply trying 
to find my way as I can in the thickets of ex- 
perience. 

And yet all this my daily life, my poor efforts 
, to remember and to predict, my fragmentary 
inquiries into this or that matter of science or 
of business, my practical acknowledgment 
of your presence as real facts in the real 

366 



LOYALTY AND RELIGION 



world of experience, my personal definition 
of the causes to which I devote myself, — these 
are all undertakings that are overruled, and 
that are rendered significant, simply in so far 
as they are reasonable parts of one all-embrac- 
ing enterprise. This enterprise is my active 
attempt to find out my true place in the real 
world. But now I can only define my real 
world by conceiving it in terms of experience. 
I can find my place in the world only by dis- 
covering where I stand in the whole system 
of experience. For what I mean by a fact 
is something that somebody finds. Even a 
merely possible fact is something only in so 
far as somebody actually could find it. And 
the sense in which it is an actual fact that 
somebody could find in his experience a de- 
terminate fact, is a sense which again can only 
be defined in terms of concrete, living, and not 
merely possible experience, and in terms of 
some will or purpose expressed in a con- 
scious life. Even possible facts, then, are 
really possible only in so far as something is 
actually experienced, or is found by some- 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

body. Whatever is real, then, be it distant or 
near, past or future, present to your mind or 
to mine, a physical fact or a moral fact, a fact 
of our possible human experience, or a fact of 
a superhuman type of experience, a purpose, 
a desire, a natural object or an ideal object, a 
mechanical system or a value, — whatever, I 
say, is real, is real as a content present to some 
conscious being. Therefore, when I inquire 
about the real world, I am simply asking what 
contents of experience, human or superhuman, 
are actually and consciously found by some- 
body. My inquiries regarding facts, of what- 
ever grade the facts may be, are therefore 
inevitably an effort to find out what the 
world's experience is. In all my common 
sense, then, in all my science, in all my social 
life, I am trying to discover what the universal 
conscious life which constitutes the world con- 
tains as its contents, and views as its own. 

But even this is not the entire story of my 
place in the real world. For I cannot inquire 
about facts without forming my own ideas 
of these facts, In so far as my ideas are true, 

368 



LOYALTY AND RELIGION 

my own personal ideas are therefore active 
processes that go on within the conscious life 
of the world. If my ideas are true, they 
succeed in agreeing with the very world con- 
sciousness that they define, But this agree- 
ment, this success, if itself it is a fact at all, 
is once more a fact of experience, — yet not 
merely of my private experience, since I 
myself never personally find, within the limits 
of my own individual experience, the success 
that every act of truth seeking demands. If 
I get the truth, then, at any point of my life, 
my success is real only in so far as some con- 
scious life, which includes my ideas and my 
efforts, and which also includes the very facts 
of the world whereof I am thinking, actually 
observes my success, in the form of a conspec- 
tus of the world's facts, and of my own efforts 
to find and to define them. 

In so far, then, as I get the truth about the 
world, I myself am a fragmentary conscious 
life that is included within the conscious con- 
spectus of the world's experience, and that is 
in one self-conscious unity with that world 

2 b 369 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



consciousness. And it is in this unity with 
the world consciousness that I get my success, 
and am in concord with the truth. 

But of course any particular idea of mine 5 
regarding the world, or regarding any fact in 
the world, may be false. However, this, pos- 
sibility of my error is itself a real situation of 
mine, and involves essentially the same rela- 
tion between the world and myself which 
obtains in case I have true ideas. For I can 
be in error about an object only in case I 
really mean to agree with that object, and to 
agree with it in a way which only my own 
purposes, in seeking this agreement, can pos- 
sibly define. It is only by virtue of my own 
undertakings that I can fail in my un- 
dertakings. It is only because, after all, I 
am loyal to the world's whole truth that I 
can so express myself in fallible ideas, and in 
fragmentary opinions that, as a fact, I may, 
at any moment, undertake too much for my 
own momentary success to be assured, so that 
I can indeed in any one of my assertions fail 
justly to accord with that world consciousness 

370 



LOYALTY AND RELIGION 

which I am all the while trying to interpret 
in my own transient way. But when I thus 
fail, I momentarily fail to interpret my place in 
the very world consciousness whose life I am 
trying to define. But my failure, when and 
in so far as it occurs, is once more a fact, — 
and therefore a fact for the world's con- 
sciousness. If I blunder, but am sincere, if I 
think myself right, but am not right, then my 
error is a fact for a consciousness which in- 
cludes my fallible attempts to be loyal to the 
truth, but which sees how they just now lose 
present touch with their true cause. Seeing 
this my momentary defeat, the world con- 
sciousness sees, however, my loyalty, and in its 
conspectus assigns, even to my fragmentary 
attempts at truth, their genuine place in the 
single unity of the world's consciousness. My 
very failure, then, like every loyal failure, is 
still a sort of success. It is an effort to define 
my place in the unity of the world's conspec- 
tus of all conscious life, I cannot fall out of 
that unity. I cannot flee from its presence. 
And I err only as the loyal may give up their 

371 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



life for their cause. Whether I get truth, 
then, or whether I err in detail, my loyal 
search for truth insures the fact that I am in 
a significant unity with the world's conscious 
life. 

The thesis that the world is one whole and 
a significant whole of conscious life is, for 
these reasons, a thesis which can only be 
viewed as an error, by reinstating this very 
assertion under a new form. For any error 
of mine concerning the world is possible only 
in so far as I really mean to assert the truth 
about the world; and this real meaning of 
mine can exist only as a fact within the 
conspectus of consciousness for which the 
real whole world exists, and within which I 
myself live. 

This, then, in brief, is my own theory of 
truth. This is why I hold this theory to be 
no fantastic guess about what may be true, 
but a logically inevitable conclusion about 
how every one of us, wise or ignorant, is ac- 
tually defining his own relation to truth, 
whether he knows the fact or not. I ex- 

372 



LOYALTY AND RELIGION 

pressed my theory at the last time in terms of 
a polemic against the recent pragmatists ; but 
as a fact their view, in its genuine and deeper 
meaning, is no more opposed to mine than 
my young Russian's vehement protest against 
loyalty, quoted in my second lecture, was, in 
its true spirit, opposed to my own view. My 
young Russian, you may remember, hated 
what he took to be loyalty, just because he 
was so loyal. And even so my friends, the 
recent pragmatists, reassert my theory of truth 
even in their every attempt to deny it. For, 
amongst other things, they assert that their 
own theory of truth is actually true. And 
that assertion implies just such a conspectus 
of all truth in one view, — just such a con- 
spectus as I too assert. 

IV 

We first came in sight of this theory of 
truth, in these discussions, for a purely prac- 
tical reason. Abstract and coldly intellectual 
as the doctrine, when stated as I have just 
stated it, may appear, we had our need to 

373 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

ask what truth is, because we wanted to know 
whether the loyal are right in supposing, as 
they inevitably do suppose, that their per- 
sonal causes, and that their cause of causes, 
namely, universal loyalty, that any such 
causes, I say, possess genuine foundation in 
truth. Loyalty, as we found, is a practical ser- 
vice of superhuman objects. For our causes 
transcend expression in terms of our single 
lives. If the cause lives, then all conscious moral 
life — even our poor human life — is in unity 
with a superhuman conscious life, in which 
we ourselves dwell ; and in tiiis unity we win, in 
so far as we are loyal servants of our cause, a 
success which no transient human experience 
of ours, no joyous thrill of the flying moment, 
no bitterness of private defeat and loss, can 
do more or less than to illustrate, to illumine, 
or to idealize. 

We asked: Is this faith of the loyal in 
their causes a pathetic fallacy ? Our theory 
of truth has given us a general answer to 
this intensely practical question. The loyal 
try to live in the spirit. But, if thereupon 

374 



LOYALTY AND RELIGION 

they merely open their eyes to the nature 
of the reasonable truth, they see that it is in 
the spirit only that they do or can live. They 
would be living in this truth, as mere passing 
fragments of conscious life, as mere blind 
series of mental processes, even if they were 
not loyal. For all life, ho we er dark and frag- 
mentary, is either a blind striving for con- 
scious unity with the universal life of which 
it is a fragment, or else, like the life of the 
loyal, is a deliberate effort to express such a 
striving in the form of a service of a super- 
human cause. And all lesser loyalties, and 
all serving of imperfect or of evil causes, are 
but fragmentary forms of the service of the 
cause of universal loyalty. To serve uni- 
versal loyalty is, however, to view the interests 
of all conscious life as one; and to do this is 
to regard all conscious life as constituting just 
such an unity as our theory of truth requires. 
Meanwhile, since truth seeking is indeed it- 
self a practical activity, what we have stated 
in our theory of truth is itself but an aspect 
of the very life that the loyal are leading, 

375 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

Whoever seeks any truth is loyal, for he is 
determining his life by reference to a life which 
transcends his own. And he is loyal to loy- 
alty; for whatever truth you try to discover 
is, if true, valid for everybody, and is there- 
fore worthy of everybody's loyal recognition. 
The loyal, then, are truth seekers ; and the 
truth seekers are loyal. And all of them live 
for the sake of the unity of all life. And this 
unity includes us all, but is superhuman. 

Our view of truth, therefore, meets at once 
an ethical and a logical need. The real 
world is precisely that world in which the loyal 
are at home. Their loyalty is no pathetic 
fallacy. Their causes are real facts in the 
universe. The universe as a whole possesses 
that unity which loyalty to loyalty seeks to 
express in its service of the whole of life. 

Herewith, however, it occurs to us to ask 
one final question. Is not this real world, 
whose true unity the loyal acknowledge by 
their every deed, and whose conscious unity 
every process of truth seeking presupposes, — 
is not this also the world which religion 

376 



LOYALTY AND RELIGION 



recognizes? If so, what is the relation oi 
loyalty to religion ? 

The materials for answering this question 
are now in our hands. We have been so 
deliberate in preparing them for our present 
purpose, just for the sake of making our 
answer the simpler when it comes. 

V 

We have now defined loyalty as the will to 
manifest the eternal in and through the deeds 
of individual selves. As for religion, — in 
its highest historical forms (which here alone 
concern us), — religion, as I think, may be de- 
fined as follows. Religion (in these its high- 
est forms) is the interpretation both of the 
eternal and of the spirit of loyalty through 
emotion, and through a fitting activity of the 
imagination. 

Religion, in any form, has always been an 
effort to interpret and to make use of some 
superhuman world. The history, the genesis, 
the earlier and simpler forms of religion, the 
relations of religion and morality in the 

377 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

primitive life of mankind, do not here con* 
cern us. It is enough to say that, in history, 
there has often been a serious tension be- 
tween the interests of religion and those of 
morality. For the higher powers have very 
generally seemed to man to be either non- 
moral or immoral. This very tension, only 
too frequently, still exists for many people 
to-day. One of the greatest and hardest 
discoveries of the human mind has been the 
discovery of how to reconcile, not religion 
and science, but religion and morality. 
Whoever knows even a small portion of the 
history of the cults of mankind is aware of the 
difficulties to which I refer. The superhu- 
man has been conceived by men in terms that 
were often far enough from those which loy- 
alty requires. Whoever will read over the 
recorded words of a writer nowadays too 
much neglected, the rugged and magnifi- 
cently loyal Old Testament prophet Amos, 
can see for himself how bravely the difficulty 
of conceiving the superhuman as the righteous, 
was faced by one of the first who ever viewed 

378 



LOYALTY AND RELIGION 

the relation of religion and morality as our 
best teachers have since taught us to view 
them. And yet such a reader can also see 
how hard this very task of the prophet was. 
When we remember also that so great a mind 
as that of the originator of Buddhism, after all 
the long previous toil of Hindoo thought upon 
this great problem, could see no way to recon- 
cile religion and morality, except by bringing 
them both to the shores of the mysterious and 
soundless ocean of Nirvana, and sinking 
them together in its depths (an undertaking 
which Buddha regarded as the salvation of 
the world), we get a further view of the nature 
of the problem. When we remember that St. 
Paul, after many years of lonely spiritual 
struggle, attempted in his teaching to recon- 
cile morality and religion by an interpretation 
of Christianity which has ever since kept the 
Christian world in a most inspiring ferment of 
theological controversy and of practical con- 
flict, we are again instructed as to the serious- 
ness of the issue. But as a fact, the experi- 
ence of the civilized man has gradually led him 

379 



THE PHILOSOPHY OP LOYALTY 



to see how to reconcile the moral life and the 
religious spirit. Since this reconciliation is one 
which our theory of truth, and of the con- 
stitution of the real world, substantially jus- 
tifies, we are now ready for a brief review of 
the entire situation. 

People often say that mere morality is 
something very remote from true religion. 
Sometimes people say this in the interests of 
religion, meaning to point out that mere 
morality can at best make you only a more 
or less tolerable citizen, while only religion 
can reconcile you, as such people say, to that 
superhuman world whose existence and whose 
support alone make human life worth living. 
But sometimes almost the same assertion is 
made in the interest of pure morality, viewed 
as something independent of religion. Some 
people tell you, namely, that since, as they 
say, religion is a collection of doubtful beliefs, 
of superstitions, and of more or less exalted 
emotions, morality is all the better for keep- 
ing aloof from religion. Suffering man needs 
your help ; your friends need as much happi- 

380 



LOYALTY AND RELIGION 



ness as you can give them; conventional 
morality is, on the whole, a good thing. Learn 
righteousness, therefore, say they, and leave 
religion to the fantastic-minded who love to 
believe. The human is what we need. Let the 
superhuman alone. 

Now, our philosophy of loyalty, aiming at 
something much larger and richer than the 
mere sum of human happiness in individual 
men, has taught us that there is no such 
sharp dividing line between the human and 
the superhuman as these attempts to sunder 
the provinces of religion and morality would 
imply. The loyal serve something more than 
individual lives. Even Nietzsche, individu- 
alist and ethical naturalist though he was, 
illustrates our present thesis. He began the 
later period of his teaching by asserting that 
"God is dead"; and (lest one might regard 
this as a mere attack upon monotheism, and 
might suppose Nietzsche to be an old-fash- 
ioned heathen polytheist) he added the fa- 
mous remark that, in case any gods whatever 
existed, he could not possibly endure being 

381 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



himself no god. " Therefore'' so he rea- 
soned, "there are no gods." All this seems 
to leave man very much to his own devices. 
Yet Nietzsche at once set up the cult of the 
ideal future being called the Uebermensch or 
Superman. And the Uebermensch is just as 
much of a god as anybody who ever throned 
upon Olympus or dwelt in the sky. And if 
the doctrine of the "Eternal Recurrence/' 
as Nietzsche defined it, is true, the Uebermensch 
belongs not only to the ideal future, but has 
existed an endless number of times already. 

If our philosophy of loyalty is right, Nietz- 
sche was not wrong in this appeal to the 
superhuman. The superhuman we indeed 
have always with us. Life has no sense 
without it. But the superhuman need not 
be the magical. It need not be the object of 
superstition. And if we are desirous of uni- 
fying the interests of morality and religion, it 
is well indeed to begin, as rugged old Amos 
began, by first appreciating what righteous- 
ness is, and then by interpreting righteous- 
ness, in a perfectly reasonable and non-super- 

382 



LOYALTY AND RELIGION 



stitious way, in superhuman terms. Then 
we shall be ready to appreciate what religion, 
whose roots are indeed by no means wholly in 
our moral nature, nevertheless has to offer us 
as a supplement to our morality. 

VI 

Loyalty is a service of causes. But, as we 
saw, we do not, we cannot, wait until some- 
body clearly shows us how good the causes 
are in themselves, before we set about serving 
them. We first practically learn of the good- 
ness of our causes through the very act of 
serving them. Loyalty begins, then, in all of 
us, in elemental forms. A cause fascinates 
us — we at first know not clearly why. We 
give ourselves willingly to that cause. Here- 
with our true life begins. The cause may 
indeed be a bad one. But at worst it is our 
way of interpreting the true cause. If we 
let our loyalty develop, it tends to turn into 
the service of the universal cause. Hence I 
deliberately declined, in this discussion, to 
base my theory of loyalty upon that meta- 

383 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 

physical doctrine which I postponed to my 
latest lectures. It is a very imperfect view 
of the real world which most youth get before 
them before they begin to be loyal. Hosts 
of the loyal actually manifest the eternal in 
their deeds, and know not that they do so. 
They only know that they are given over to 
their cause. The first good of loyalty lies, 
then, in the fact which we emphasized in our 
earlier lectures. Reverberating all through 
you, stirring you to your depths, loyalty first 
unifies your plan of life, and thereby gives 
you what nothing else can give, — your self 
as a life lived in accordance with a plan, your 
conscience as your plan interpreted for you 
through your ideal, your cause expressed as 
your personal purpose in living. 

In so far, then, one can indeed be loyal 
without being consciously and explicitly reli- 
gious. One's cause, in its first intention, 
appears to him human, concrete, practical. 
It is also an ideal. It is also a superhuman 
entity. It also really means the service of 
the eternal. But this fact may be, to the hard- 

384 



LOYALTY AND RELIGION 



working, and especially to the unimaginative, 
and, in a worldly sense, fairly successful man, 
a latent fact. He then, to be sure, gradually 
idealizes his cause as he goes; but this ideal- 
izing in so far becomes no very explicitly 
emphasized process in his life, although, as 
we have seen, some tendency to deify the 
cause is inevitable. 

Meanwhile, such an imperfectly developed 
but loyal man may also accept, upon tradi- 
tional grounds, a religion. This religion will 
then tell him about a superhuman world. 
But in so far the religion need not be, to his 
mind, an essential factor in his practical loy- 
alty. He may be superstitious; or he may 
be a religious formalist; or he may accept 
his creed and his church simply because of 
their social respectability and usefulness; or, 
finally, he may even have a rich and genuine 
religious experience, which still may remain 
rather a mysticism than a morality, or an 
aesthetic comfort rather than a love of his 
cause. 

In such cases, loyalty and religion may long 

2 c 385 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



keep apart. But the fact remains that loy- 
alty, if sincere, involves at least a latent belief 
in the superhuman reality of the cause, and 
means at least an unconscious devotion to the 
one and eternal cause. But such a belief is 
also a latent union of morality and religion. 
Such a service is an unconscious piety. The 
time may come, then, when the morality will 
consciously need this union with the religious 
creed of the individual whose growth we are 
portraying. 

This union must begin to become an ex- 
plicit union whenever that process which, in 
our sixth lecture, we called the idealizing of 
the cause, reaches its higher levels. We saw 
that those higher levels are reached in the 
presence of what seems to be, to human 
vision, a lost cause. If we believe in the lost 
cause, we become directly aware that we are 
indeed seeking a city out of sight. If such a 
cause is real, it belongs to a superhuman 
world. Now, every cause worthy, as we said, 
of lifelong service, and capable of unifying 
our life plans, shows sooner or later that it is 

386 



LOYALTY AND RELIGION 



a cause which we cannot successfully express 
in any set of human experiences of transient 
joys and of crumbling successes. Human life 
taken merely as it flows, viewed merely as it 
passes by in time and is gone, is indeed a lost 
river of experience that plunges down the 
mountains of youth and sinks in the deserts 
of age. Its significance comes solely through 
its relations to the air and the ocean and the 
great deeps of universal experience. For by 
such poor figures I may, in passing, symbolize 
that really rational relation of our personal 
experience to universal conscious experience, 
— that relation to which I have devoted these 
last two lectures. 

Everybody ought to serve the universal 
cause in his own individual way. For this, 
as we have seen, is what loyalty, when it comes 
to know its own mind, really means. But 
whoever thus serves inevitably loses his cause 
in our poor world of human sense-experience, 
because his cause is too good for this present 
temporal world to express it. And that is, 
after all, what the old theology meant when it 

387 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



called you and me, as we now naturally are, 
lost beings. Our deepest loyalty lies in devot- 
ing ourselves to causes that are just now lost 
to our poor human nature. One can express 
this, of course, by saying that the true cause 
is indeed real enough, in the higher world, 
while it is our poor human nature which is 
lost. Both ways of viewing the case have 
their truth. Loyalty means a transformation 
of our nature. 

Lost causes, then, we must serve. But as 
we have seen, in our sixth lecture, loyalty to a 
lost cause has two companions, grief and imag- 
ination. Now, these two are the parents of all 
the higher forms of genuinely ethical religion. 
If you doubt the fact, read the scriptures of 
any of the great ethical faiths. Consult the 
psalter, the hymns, the devotional books, or 
the prayers of the church. Such religion 
interprets the superhuman in forms that our 
longing, our grief, and our imagination in- 
vent, but also in terms that are intended to 
meet the demands of our highest loyalty. 
TEW we are loyal to that unity of life which, 

388 



LOYALTY AND RELIGION 



as our truer moral consciousness learns to 
believe, owns the whole real world, and con- 
stitutes the cause of causes. In being loyal 
to universal loyalty, we are serving the unity 
of life. 

This true unity of the world-life, however, 
is at once very near to us and very far from 
us. Very near it is ; for we have our being 
in it, and depend upon it for whatever worth 
we have. Apart from it we are but the gur- 
gling stream soon to be lost in the desert. In 
union with it we have individual significance 
in and for the whole. But we are very far 
from it also, because our human experience 
throws such fragmentary light upon the de- 
tails of our relation to its activities. Hence in 
order to feel our relations to it as vital relations, 
we have to bring it near to our feelings and 
to our imaginations. And we long and suffer 
the loneliness of this life as we do so. But 
because we know of the details of the world 
only through our empirical sciences, while 
these give us rather materials for a rational 
life than a view of the unity of life, we are 

389 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



indeed left to our imagination to assuage 
grief and to help in the training of loyalty. 
For here, that is, precisely as to the details of 
the system of facts whereby our life is linked 
to the eternal, our science forsakes us. We 
can know that we are thus linked. How we 
are linked, our sciences do not make manifest 
to us. 

Hence the actual content of the higher 
ethical religions is endlessly rich in legend 
and in other symbolic portrayal. This por- 
trayal is rich in emotional meaning and in 
vivid detail. What this portrayal attempts 
to characterize is, in its general outline, an 
absolute truth. This truth consists in the 
following facts : First, the rational unity and 
goodness of the world-life; next, its true but 
invisible nearness to us, despite our ignorance; 
further, its fulness of meaning despite our 
barrenness of present experience; and yet 
more, its interest in our personal destiny as 
moral beings; and finally, the certainty that, 
through our actual human loyalty, we come, 
like Moses, face to face with the true will of 

390 



LOYALTY AND RELIGION 

the world, as a man speaks to his friend. In 
recognizing these facts, we have before us 
what may be called the creed of the Abso- 
lute Religion. 

You may well ask, of course, whether our 
theory of truth, as heretofore expounded, gives 
any warrant to such religious convictions. I 
hold that it does give warrant to them. The 
symbols in which these truths are expressed by 
one or another religion are indeed due to all 
sorts of historical accidents, and to the most 
varied play of the imaginations both of the 
peoples and of the religious geniuses of our 
race. But that our relations to the world-life 
are relations wherein we are consciously met, 
from the other side, by a superhuman and 
yet strictly personal conscious life, in which 
our own personalities are themselves bound 
up, but which also is not only richer but is 

more concrete and definitelv conscious and 

*/ 

real than we are, — this seems to me to be an 
inevitable corollary of my theory of truth. 



391 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



VII 

And now, finally, to sum up our whole doc- 
trine of loyalty and religion. Two things 
belonging to the world-life we know — two 
at least, if my theory is true : it is defined in 
terms of our own needs; and it includes and 
completes our experience. Hence, in any case, 
it is precisely as live and elemental and con- 
crete as we are; and there is not a need of 
ours which is not its own. If you ask why I 
call it good — well, the very arguments which 
recent pragmatism has used are, as you re- 
member, here my warrant. A truth cannot 
be a merely theoretical truth. True is that 
which successfully fulfils an idea. Whoever, 
again, is not succeeding, or is facing an evil, 
or is dissatisfied, is inevitably demanding and 
defining facts that are far beyond him, and that 
are not yet consciously his own. A knower 
of the totality of truth is therefore, of neces- 
sity, in possession of the fulfilment of all 
rational purposes. If, however, you ask why 
this world-life permits any evil whatever, or 

392 



LOYALTY AND RELIGION 

any finitude, or any imperfections, I must in- 
deed reply that here is no place for a general 
discussion of the whole problem of evil, which 
I have repeatedly and wearisomely considered 
in other discussions of mine. But this obser- 
vation does belong here. Our theory of evil 
is indeed no "shallow optimism," but is 
founded upon the deepest, the bitterest, and 
the dearest moral experience of the human 
race. The loyal, and they alone, know the 
one great good of suffering, of ignorance, of 
finitude, of loss, of defeat — and that is just 
the good of loyalty, so long as the cause itself 
can only be viewed as indeed a living whole. 
Spiritual peace is surely no easy thing. We 
win that peace only through stress and suffer- 
ing and loss and labor. But when we find 
the preciousness of the idealized cause empha- 
sized through grief, we see that, whatever evil 
is, it at least may have its place in an ideal 
order. What would be the universe without 
loyalty; and what would loyalty be without 
trial ? And when we remember that, from 
this point of view, our own griefs are the griefs 

393 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



of the very world consciousness itself, in so 
far as this world-life is expressed in our lives, 
it may well occur to us that the life of loyalty 
with all its griefs and burdens and cares may 
be the very foundation of the attainment of 
that spiritual triumph which we must conceive 
as realized by the world spirit. 

Perhaps, however, one weakly says: "If 
the world will attains in its wholeness what we 
seek, why need we seek that good at all?' ' I 
answer at once that our whole philosophy of 
loyalty instantly shows the vanity of such 
speech. Of course, the world-life does not 
obtain the individual good that is involved in 
my willing loyalty unless indeed I am loyal. 
The cause may in some way triumph without 
me, but not as my cause. We have never 
defined our theory as meaning that the world- 
life is first eternally complete, but then asks us, 
in an indifferent way, to copy its perfections. 
Our view is that each of us who is loyal is 
doing his unique deed in that whole of life 
which we have called the eternal simply 
because it is the conspectus of the totality of 

394 



LOYALTY AND RELIGION 

life, past, present, and future. If my deed 
were not done, the world-life would miss my 
deed. Each of us can say that. The very 
basis of our theory of truth, which we found 
upon the deeds, the ideas, the practical needs, 
of each of us, gives every individual his unique 
place in the world order — his deed that no- 
body else can do, his will which is his own. 
"Our wills are ours to make them thine. " 
The unity of the world is not an ocean in which 
we are lost, but a life which is and which 
needs all our lives in one. Our loyalty de- 
fines that unity for us as a living, active unity. 
We have come to the unity through the under- 
standing of our loyalty. It is an eternal unity 
only in so far as it includes all time and 
change and life and deeds. And therefore, 
when we reach this view, since the view simply 
fulfils what loyalty demands, our loyalty re- 
mains as precious to us, and as practical, 
and as genuinely a service of a cause, as it 
was before. It is no sort of "moral holiday" 
that this whole world-life suggests to us. It is 
precisely as a whole life of ideal strivings in 

395 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY 



which we have our places as individual selves 
and are such selves only in so far as we strive 
to do our part in the whole, — it is thus, and 
thus only, that our philosophy of loyalty 
regards the universe. 

Religion, therefore, precisely in so far as it 
attempts to conceive the universe as a con- 
scious and personal life of superhuman mean- 
ing, and as a life that is in close touch with 
our own meaning, is eternally true. But now 
it is just this general view of the universe as a 
rational order that is indeed open to our 
rational knowledge. No part of such a doc- 
trine gives us, however, the present right as 
human beings to determine with any certainty 
the details of the world-life, except in so far 
as they come within the scope of our scien- 
tific and of our social inquiries. Hence, 
when religion, in the service of loyalty, inter- 
prets the world-life to us with symbolic detail, 
it gives us indeed merely symbols of the eternal 
truth. That this truth is indeed eternal, that 
our loyalty brings us into personal relations 
with a personal world-life, which values our 

396 



LOYALTY AND RELIGION 

every loyal deed, and needs that deed, all this 
is true and rational. And just this is what 
religion rightly illustrates. But the parables, 
the symbols, the historical incidents that the 
religious imagination uses in its portrayals, — 
these are the more or less sacred and transient 
accidents in which the "real presence" of the 
divine at once shows itself to us, and hides the 
detail of its inner life from us. These acci- 
dents of the religious imagination endure 
through many ages ; but they also vary from 
place to place and from one nation or race of 
men to another, and they ought to do so. 
Whoever sees the living truth of the personal 
and conscious and ethical unity of the world 
through these symbols is possessed of the 
absolute religion, whatever be his nominal 
creed or church. Whoever overemphasizes 
the empirical details of these symbols, and 
then asks us to accept these details as literally 
true, commits an error which seems to me 
simply to invert that error whereof, at the last 
time, I ventured to accuse my pragmatist 
friends. Such a literalist, who reads his 

397 



THE PHILOSOPHY OP LOYALTY 

symbols as revelations of the detailed structure 
of the divine life, seems to me, namely, to look 
for the eternal within the realm of the mere 
data of human sense and imagination. To 
do this, I think, is indeed to seek the risen 
Lord in the open sepulchre. 

Concerning the living truth of the whole 
conscious universe, one can well say, as one 
observes the special facts of human sense and 
imagination: "He is not here; he is arisen." 
Yet equally from the whole circle of the heaven 
of that entire self-conscious life which is the 
truth, there comes always, and to all the loyal, 
the word: "Lo, I am with you alway, even 
unto the end of the world/' 



398 



INDEX 



Abstractions : impersonal ab- 
stractions cannot be proper 
objects of loyalty , 20, 52. 

Agreement : with reality, in 
relation to truth, 316, 322, 324, 
327, 328, 340-346, 360-373. 

Altruism : a mere fragment of 
goodness, 218; relations of, 
to benevolence, to justice, and 
to loyalty, see Benevolence 
and Justice. 

American Problems : problem 
of family loyalty, 220-228; 
loyalty to the national govern- 
ment, 233-236; the problem 
of the "self-estranged social 
mind, " 238-244 ; provincial- 
ism as a means of training 
loyalty, 245-248 ; defective 
loyalty in our national life, 
217-220 ; defective patriotism, 
233-236; holidays, 267, 268; 
sport, 265-267. 

Ancestral Tendencies : as basis 
of our conflicting natural de- 
sires, 27, 28, 31, 57. 

Aristotle : 26. 

Arnold von Winkelried : 113, 
329. 

Art and Loyalty : 289, 290. 

Augustine, Saint: 26. 

Authority : of the moral law, 
dependent for its justification 
upon our own rational will, 25 ; 
individualistic revolt against 
authority, 3-6, 33-35, 37, 60, 
65-67, 83, 84, 92-95 ; decline of 
family authority, 220-223 ; loy- 
alty not blind submission to 
authority, 42, 58, 71-79, 94, 95, 
110, 199, 226; authority of 



conscience denned and ex- 
plained, 172-179. 
Autonomy : of the rational will, 
principle of, as fundamental 
in ethics, 24-27 ; paradox re- 
garding this autonomy, 30, 31, 
34-37 ; loyalty as the solution 
of the paradox, 38-42; au- 
tonomy as defined by some 
forms of individualism, 84, 85, 
92 ; loj^alty as the means of 
securing moral autonomy, 95, 
110. See also Self, Self- 
will, and Loyalty. 

Benevolence : its relation to 
loyalty, and to justice, 15, 144 ; 
definition of benevolence, 145 ; 
apart from loyalty is senti- 
ment alism, but necessarily at- 
tends loyalty, 160. 

Buddhism : influence of, upon 
the Japanese ideal of loyalty, 
73 ; relation of Buddhism to 
the historical conflicts between 
religious and moral interests, 
379. 

Bushido : the Japanese concept 
of loyalty sketched, 70-76; 
it is not without individualistic 
features, 72, 73, 74, 76; is a 
counter-instance to urge against 
the partisans of false individual- 
ism, 71, 75; its training of 
serenity and self-control, 76 ; 
its relation to patriotism, 235. 

Cash Value : as a metaphorical 
expression for the nature of 
truth, 321-323, 328, 329, 346, 
347. 



399 



INDEX 



Cause : the concept of a cause to 
which one can be loyal, 17, 18- 
20; a cause must involve 
persons, but be also, in some 
sense, super-individual, 20, 51- 
53, 307-313 ; and hence, if real, 
must involve a superhuman 
spiritual unity of life, 309, 313, 
329, 330, 341, 342, 347, 348, 
354, 355; the true cause 
characterized as "the eternal," 
357; and related to the object 
of the religious consciousness, 
377; all serving of imperfect 
causes as fragmentary forms of 
the service of the true cause, 
375; the true cause a reality, 
303-306, 313, 314, 340-346, 
358-373 ; hence, also an object 
for religion, 382-391. The 
cause for any individual has 
to be defined in terms of his 
personal choice and of his 
individual nature, 19, 39-42, 
52-54, 58, 93, 110, 125, 130, 
131, 138, 156, 157, 177, 186, 
187, 226; and the individual 
may be loyal to an evil cause, 
18, 108, 109, 114-118; but the 
principle of loyalty to loyalty 
relates cause of each individual 
to the true and universal cause, 
117-128; resulting organiza- 
tion of the individual's service 
of causes, 130-146, 151-162; 
cause and conscience as aspects 
of one fact, 44, 47, 173-177. 
The idealizing of individual 
causes as a means of training 
in loyalty, 269 ; this idealizing 
as guided by personal leaders, 
270-276; as exemplified by 
the history of lost causes, 277- 
286; the lost cause as a link 
which binds individual to 
universal causes, 291-296, 297; 
the truth as a cause, and as at 
present, in part, a lost cause, 
340; but real and universal, 
340, 341 ; the true cause as 
defined by the creed of the 



Absolute Religion, 390. See 
also Loyalty, especially Loy- 
alty to Loyalty. 

Charles I : incident of the 
King's invasion of the House 
of Commons, 103-107. 

Childhood : preparation for loy- 
alty, and rudiments of loyalty 
in childhood, 259-262; ideal 
comrades, 260; gangs of boys, 
262 ; talebearing and the child- 
ish code of honor, 262, 263. 

Chinese Sages : influence of, 
upon the Japanese ideal of 
loyalty, 73. 

Christianity : due to loyalty 
to a lost cause, 279, 280, 283, 
293. 

Civil War, American : loyalty to 
loyalty displayed upon both 
sides; resulting service of the 
one cause of the nation, 193. 

Commercial Honesty : as an 
instance of the principle of 
loyalty to loyalty, 141. 

Conflict: the mutual warfare 
of causes as a supreme evil, 
114-117; loyalty to loyalty 
as averse to such conflicts, 119, 
126, 144; where conflict is 
inevitable, the principle of 
loyalty to loyalty neverthe- 
less applies, and determines 
the ethics of conflict, 158, 162, 
214. The decision of Con- 
science as between conflicting 
forms of personal loyalty, 179- 
196. See Conscience and 
Decisiveness. 

Conformity, Social : 34, 35, 38, 
41, 58; is never a satisfactory 
expression of the individual 
will, unless it becomes part of 
loyalty, 60, 62, 63, 66, 82-84, 
91, 98, 124-126, 199. See also 
Self-will, Self, and Loyalty. 

Conscience : " Dictates of," 162, 
164, 180 ; loyalty as apparently 
opposed to conscience, 63 ; 
the problem of conscience 
stated, 166; the solution of 



400 



INDEX 



this problem depends upon that 
of the problem of the Self, 167 ; 
the Self as denned by a plan 
of life, 168, 169; loyalty as a 
means of defining a plan of 
life, 170-172; "my cause is 
my conscience," 44, 47, 173; 
cause, ideal, and conscience in 
their relations, 174-177 ; con- 
science not the root but the 
flower of moral life, 177; 
fallibility of conscience, 177, 
178 ; conscience as an indi- 
vidual possession, 179 ; doubt- 
ful cases of conscience, 180— 
196; decisiveness and fidelity 
as requirements of conscience, 
185 sqq. ; conscience as the 
" response of the entire na- 
ture," 195, 196. 

Conventional Morality : is 
criticised in modern discussion, 
3-6 ; needs revision, 9, 10 ; 
consists of a maze of precepts of 
various origin, 149, 150; yet 
expresses significant truth, 150 ; 
has an "immortal soul," 11, 
12; needs to be unified, 149- 
151 ; can be revised and ra- 
tionally unified in terms of the 
principle of loyalty to loyalty, 
139-146, 159-162. 

Courtesy : as a special instance 
of the principle of loyalty to 
loyalty, 155. 

Creed : of the Absolute Religion, 
390. 

David : the throne of, 279. 

Death : in relation, to loyalty, 
90, 91, 235, 293-295, 353, 398. 

Decisiveness : as one aspect of 
loyalty, as a requirement of 
conscience, and as leading to 
and accompanying fidelity, 
179-196 ; the conflicting claims 
of various loyalties when they 
appeal to the same person, 181 ; 
illustrations, 182-184 ; the duty 
to decide, 185-190; decision 
must be followed up by faith- 



fulness, 190; conscience as 
the deciding principle, 192; 
mystery, fallibility, and duti- 
fulness of the conscientious 
decision, 193-196. 

Desires : natural, not to be de- 
fined simply in terms of pleas- 
ure and pain, 28-30 ; are count- 
less and conflicting, id., 31, 57, 
81, 123, 124; are not to be 
unified through mere social 
authority, 32-35, 82-84; nor 
gratified by the attainment of 
individual power, 84-89 ; but 
reach reasonable unity only 
through loyalty, 38-45, 57-59, 
124, 125. 

Devotion : not an adequate 
synonym for Loyalty, 253. 

Divorce: 221. 

Duty : problem of, stated, 24 ; 
my duty as my own will 
brought to clear self-conscious- 
ness, 25 ; thesis that duty can 
be defined in terms of loyalty, 
15 ; loyalty to loyalty as a 
duty, 121 ; special duties as 
forms of loyaltv to loyalty, 
129, 132, 133, 141 ; sketch of a 
classification of duties, 142— 
146, 159-161; fidelity and 
decisiveness as duties, 185-196 ; 
duties and rights, in their 
relations to one another, 65- 
68, 91, 143, 150, 162. 

Eckhart, Meister : 97, 125. 

Emmaus : the legend of the dis- 
ciples on the road to, 293. 

Eternal, The: 344, 348, 356; 
loyalty as the will to manifest 
the eternal in the deeds of a 
Self, 357 ; religion as the in- 
terpretation of the eternal, 377 ; 
truth concerning the eternal 
summarized, 389-398. 

Ethics : modern tendency 
towards revision of ethical 
doctrine, 3-6 ; practical con- 
sequences of this tendency, 8; 
consequent need of a revision 



2d 



401 



INDEX 



of ethical standards, 9-12; 
limitations of the study of 
ethics proposed in the present 
work, 7; a revision of ethical 
doctrine no mere break with 
the past, 11, 12; problem of 
ethics stated, 24-31 ; this 
problem insoluble in terms of 
mere convention, 33-37 ; loy- 
alty as a personal solution of 
the problem for any given 
individual, 38-47; the ethics 
of individualism discussed, 59- 
98; loyalty to loyalty as a 
general solution of the problem 
of ethics, 111-128; applica- 
tion of this solution to the 
special virtues, 128-146. See 
also Conscience, Duty, Loy- 
alty, Morality. 

Evil : problem of, 394. 

Expediency and Truth : 322, 
331-340. 

Fair Play : in sport as a form of 
loyalty to loyalty, 158, 163, 
267. 

Family, The : in modern Ameri- 
can life, 220-228; decline of 
family authority, 220, 221; 
the family ties are opportunities 
for loyalty, or else forms of 
loyalty, 221 ; their value, 221- 
223 ; the preciousness of family 
loyalty, 223-228. 

Fidelity : to the personal cause 
once chosen, is an inseparable 
aspect of the principle of 
loyalty to loyalty, 157, 190- 
192, 207, 221, 222, 226 ; but is 
also limited in its range of 
application by that principle, 
208 ; and hereby the conditions 
which may require the break- 
ing of ties are denned, 157, 208, 
224. 

Fichte, J. G. : 325, 326. 

Fortune : contrast between for- 
tune as viewed by the power- 
seekers and as viewed by the 
loyal, 87-92. 



Fourth of July : 267. 
Friendship : 287. 

Generosity : 150, 161. 

George, Henry : 4. 

Good, The : is determined for 
each individual by his own will 
and desire, 25; but is yet not 
definable in terms of pleasure 
and pain, 28 ; nor yet in terms 
of happiness, 81 ; nor in terms 
of social conformity, 82-84; 
nor in terms of Power, 84-92; 
nor in terms of autonomy 
apart from loyalty, 93 ; nor in 
terms of serenity apart from 
activity, 95-97. Loyalty as a 
supreme good for the indi- 
vidual, 21-24, 39-47, 57-59, 
75-77, 98, 112-114, 124, 125- 
152; loyalty to loyalty as an 
universal good, 118, 126, 127, 
153-158; the good and the 
expedient in relation to the 
concept of truth, 322, 323, 328- 
331, 337-340 ; the good in its 
relation to the problem of evil, 
392 ; the goodness of the world 
no reason for a " moral holi- 
day," 395. 

Gray's Elegy : cited, 123. 

Grief and Imagination : as the 
accompaniments of loyalty to 
lost causes, 283; consequences 
of this union, 281-285; rela- 
tion between religion and mo- 
rality thus brought to pass, 
285, 286; the higher ethical 
religions as the products of 
grief and imagination, 388. 

Hegel : on the ' ' self-estranged 
social mind," 238-241 ; on the 
nature of truth, 325. 

Hesitancy : corrected by loyalty, 
22 ; opposed by the decisiveness 
which loyalty requires, 185- 
196.. False individualism as a 
form of hesitancy, 98. 

Holidays : 267. 

Hora Novissima : 283. 



402 



INDEX 



Ibsen : 4, 98. 

Idealizing of the Cause : proc- 
ess described and illustrated, 
268 sqq. ; relation to lost causes, 
276-286, 291-298; to art and 
religion, 288-291 ; to religious 
truth, 386-398 ; to the general 
theory of truth and reality, 
Lectures VII and VIII. 

Imagination : in its influence 
upon the idealizing of lost 
causes, and upon the origin of 
higher religion, see Grief and 
Imagination. 

Independence : as an ideal of 
individual life, 92-95. See Au- 
tonomy, Authority, Indi- 
vidualism, and Loyalty. 

Individualism : as an assailant 
of conventional morality in 
recent times, 4; the ethics of 
individualism discussed, 59-98; 
four forms of individualism 
illustrated, 60-70; comparison 
of the Japanese type of loyalty 
with the claims of individualism, 
70-76; basis and relative 
justification of individualism, 
77-80; criticism of special 
individualistic ideals, 81-98 ; 
individual happiness as an 
ideal, 81, cf. 28-30; revolt of 
individualism against mere 
conventionality justified, 84 ; 
power as an individualistic 
ideal, 84-91 ; moral autonomy, 
92-94, cf. 24-26; individual 
serenity, 95-97 ; individualism 
fulfilled only in loyalty, 98; 
loyalty as determined by in- 
dividual choice, 110, 130, 133, 
185-196 ; the reconciliation of 
loyalty and individualism, 199, 
200, 223-228; the individual 
without loyalty as a " spoke out 
of a wheel," 222; as morally 
dead, 225; the moral self as 
defined through its cause, 171, 
172. 

Instincts : their variety and 
their relation to desires, to 



pleasure, and to pain, 28-30. 
See also Desires, and Pleas- 
ure and Pain. 
Israel : religion of, due to loyalty 
to a lost cause, 278, 279 ; con- 
sequences for Christianity and 
for the world, 279, 280, 293. 

James, Professor William : On 
"The Will to Believe," 189, 
357; his doctrine regarding 
the nature of truth expounded, 
315-323; criticised, 324-340; 
the author's obligations to him 
as teacher and friend, 325-327. 

Japanese Loyalty : see Bushido, 
72-77. 

Japanese Patriotism : id., see 
also 235. 

Johns Hopkins University : 325. 

Justice : definition of, 144 ; is 
one aspect of loyalty, id., see 
also 15 ; its relation to benevo- 
lence and kindness, 145, 162. 

Kant : 26, 64, 79, 325. 

Labor-unions : 229-232, 244. 

Lee, Robert E. : 183, 193. 

Legend : in religion, 390. 

Liberty : without loyalty is 
worthless to any people, 211. 

Lincoln, Abraham : 212. 

Lost Causes : their significance 
for the history and for the 
individual training of loyalty, 
277-286, 291-295; for the 
unifying of the moral and the 
religious consciousness, 297, 
298, 386-389. 

Love of Mankind : in relation 
to the principle of loyalty to 
loyalty, 150, 159-162, 214. 

Loyalty : plan of a Philosophy of 
Loyalty outlined, 12-16; pre- 
liminary definition of loyalty, 
16, 17, cf. also 252-254; final 
definition of loyalty, 357; 
relation of loyalty to the con- 
cept of a cause to which one is 
loyal, 18, 19 ; loyalty never a 



403 



INDEX 



service of the wholly impersonal, 
20; social interests necessary 
to loyalty, 252, 254-257; the 
cause as a tie that binds in- 
dividuals into an unity, 20, 
cf. 307-312, 329, 347, 348, 
355-357; the good of loyalty, 
complexity of the question, 21 ; 
value of loyalty for the loyal 
man, 22; relation of this value 
to the problem of the plan of 
life, 24-37 ; how loyalty may 
appear as a personal solution 
of this problem, 38 sqq. ; loy- 
alty as an intensification of 
self-consciousness, 41 ; yet as 
a subordination of self-will, 42 ; 
patriotism and the war-spirit 
as simple illustrations of loy- 
alty, 39-41 ; but not as the 
principal illustrations, 43 ; 
fruits of loyalty, 44-46 ; loy- 
alty as essential to peace in 
active living, 46 ; doubts as to 
whether the worthy cause can 
be found, 47, 48 ; summary of 
the value of loyalty for the 
individual, 51-59 ; individual- 
istic objections to the value of 
loyalty for the loyal individual, 
59-70 ; loyalty as opposed to 
personal independence, 60, 61 ; 
as opposed to the development 
of conscience, 62, 63 ; loyalty 
as opposed to self-assertion, 
65-68 ; as opposed to spiritual- 
ity, 69 ; Japanese loyalty as a 
counter-instance with which 
to answer all these objections to 
loyalty, 70-76; the failure of 
individualism to satisfy the 
individual unless it assumes 
the form of loyalty, 77-97; 
loyalty in relation to fortune, 
and to the failure of our search 
for individual power, 89-91 ; 
the loyal as " always at home/' 
despite ill fortune, 91 ; loyalty 
and independence of moral 
judgment, 92-95; loyalty as 
the fulfilment of spirituality, 



97; synthesis of loyalty and 
individualism, 98; loyalty as 
illustrated by the Speaker in 
presence of King Charles, 101- 
105 ; personal dignity of loyalty, 
105-107. — Loyalty to Loy- 
alty as a solution of the problem 
of the search for a worthy cause, 
107-146; difficulty of the 
definition of a cause worthy of 
loyalty, 107-111 ; loyalty as a 
common human good, 112-114; 
the conflict of causes, and of 
loyalties, as an evil, 114, 115; 
and as a supreme evil, 116, 117 ; 
a cause is good in so far as it 
furthers universal loyalty, 118; 
the principle of loyalty to 
loyalty stated, 121 ; defended, 
122-128 ; is not an unpractical 
principle, 128-139 ; the com- 
monplace virtues as instances 
of loyalty to loyalty, 129; 
the system of causes required 
in order to be loyal to loyalty, 
132; each man's cause to be 
individually chosen, 131, 133 ; 
indirect influence of one man's 
loyalty upon the general loy- 
alty, 134-138; a personal il- 
lustration of this principle, 
135-137 ; loyalty is contagious, 
137 ; the rational duties of the 
civilized man as instances of 
loyalty to loyalty, 139; truth- 
speaking as a form of loyalty, 
140; commercial honesty, as 
another form, 141 ; duties to 
self, in the light of the principle 
of loyalty, 142; rights, 143; 
duties to neighbors, 144; be- 
nevolence and justice as morally 
valuable only when determined 
by loyalty, 144-146 ; summary 
of the theory of loyalty to 
loyalty, 149-162 ; courtesy and 
loyalty, 155 ; universal respect 
for the loyalty of all men a 
duty, 157, 158; solution of 
popular moral perplexities 
through the principle of loyalty 



404 



INDEX 



to loyalty, 160-162. The re- 
lations of loyalty to Con- 
science, 162-196 (see Con- 
science) . Further illustra- 
tions and summaries regarding 
loyalty, 200-211; loyalty va- 
ries with the individual, 200 ; 
loyalty to loyalty as a principle 
that requires us to be strict 
towards ourselves, liberal in 
our judgments towards others, 
203-207; fidelity and loyalty 
inseparable, 190, 191, 207, 221 ; 
loyalty to loyalty existed in 
both the North and the South 
during the civil war, 193 ; con- 
sequences hereof, id.; problem 
of teaching loyalty a difficult 
one, 211 ; how to be dealt 
with, 215-217, 232, 245-248, 
258-298. — Loyalty in Rela- 
tion to American Problems, 
211-248; present status of 
loyalty in our national fife, 
213, 217-219, 223, 228-232, 
241-244; the problem of fam- 
ily loyalty, 220-228; loyalty 
to the national government, 
233-236; provincialism as a 
means of training loyalty, 245- 
248. — Training for Loy- 
alty, involves personal leaders 
and the idealizing of causes, 
269-276, and also labors which 
exercise loyalty, 296-298; loy- 
alty rudimentary in childhood, 
258-263 ; relations of childhood 
imagination to loyalty, 260 ; 
respect for the beginnings of 
childish loyalty important, 252 ; 
loyalty in youth, 263-268; 
fraternities and sports, 265, 
266; fair play in sport, 267; 
public holidays, 267, 268; 
illustrations of adult training 
in loyalty, 270-275 ; lost causes 
and their importance for loy- 
alty, 277-286, 291-296 ; art in 
its relation to loyalty, 289, 
290. — Metaphysical Aspects 
of Loyalty, 301-310, 355- 



360; loyalty involves a belief 
that the cause is real, 301, 304, 
306, 307 ; spiritual unity of life 
implied by this belief, 309 ; 
consequent opposition between 
the philosophy of loyalty and 
recent pragmatism, 313-316 ; 
exposition and criticism of 
pragmatism, 316-340 ; the view 
of the nature of truth which 
loyalty demands, 328-340, 358- 
365 ; relations of loyalty to 
Religion, 377-398. 

Marx, Karl : 4. 

Memorial Day : 267. 

Messianic Idea : 279. 

Morality : modern critics of 
moral traditions, 3, 4; these 
critics are often themselves 
moral leaders, 4; need of a 
criticism and revision of con- 
ventional morality, 9-1 1 ; moral 
standards possess a meaning 
that remains permanent de- 
spite revisions, 11,12; loyalty 
as the fulfilment of the moral 
law, 15; moral standards as 
the expression of the individual 
will rationalized and brought 
to self-consciousness, 24-27 ; 
individualism in morality, ex- 
pounded, illustrated, and criti- 
cised, 59-98; the moral code 
of loyalty to loyalty, 119-134, 
142-144, 156-162, 200-211 ; 
moral problems in American 
life, 211-248; morality and 
religion, their conflict and their 
reconciliation, 377-398. See 
also Conscience, Duty, 
Ethics, Loyalty. 

Napoleon: 88, 91. 

Nature : human nature, apart 
from social training, determines 
no definite tendency of the 
will, 31 ; but furnishes to us 
a collection of unorganized 
desires, 27-30; yet is predis- 
posed to the acquisition of 



405 



INDEX 



social training, 32; is in need 
of unified plans of life, 57-59, 
123-125 ; and possesses an 
innate power to acquire a con- 
science, 177. 

Nietzsche: 4, 85, 98, 381, 382. 

Nitobe : 72. 

Obedience : in relation to loy- 
alty, 40, 41, 72-77, 82-84, 
98, 102-106, 109, 124, 125, 
220, 221. 

Old Testament : 279. 

Omar Khayyam : quoted, 58. 

Pain : see Pleasure and Pain. 

Patriotism : 39-41 ; Japanese, 
72-77, 235; lack of true pa- 
triotism in modern American 
life, 228-237. 

Philosophy : 13. 

Philosophy of Loyalty : use 
and definition of the phrase, 
12-14; outline of the plan of 
such a philosophy, 14-16; 
general summary of the philos- 
ophy of loyalty, 351-358 ; a 
philosophy of loyalty must in- 
clude a theory about the real 
universe, 301-307. See also 
Loyalty, Conscience, Indi- 
vidualism, Morality. 

Plans of Life : their social ori- 
gin, and their relation to 
loyalty, 34, 38, 42, 57; to the 
definition of the Self, 167-172; 
to conscience, 172-179; the 
duty of decisiveness regarding 
the plans of fife, 185-196. 

Plato: 26. 

Pleasure and Pain : in what 
way objects of desire, 28, 29; 
the art of pleasure seeking one 
of the hardest of arts, 30; the 
good not definable in terms of 
happiness, 81, 82; the pain of 
defeat as an aid in the idealiz- 
ing of lost causes, 281-284, 
295 ; the pain of labor for the 
cause as an aid to loyalty, 296, 
297 : suffering as an indis- 



pensable aspect of the spiritual 
fife, 393. 
Plotinus : 69. 

Political Parties in America : 

229-232. 
Portia : 127. 

Power : doctrine that the high- 
est good for the individual is 
power, stated, 84; illustrated 
by the thesis of Nietzsche, 85, 
86 ; the doctrine criticised, 86- 
89 ; contrast between the 
search for power and the loyal 
service of a cause, 89-91 ; 
summary of the case against 
power as an ideal, 91, 92; 
national prowess valuable as 
an instrument for serving 
universal loyalty, 214. 

Pragmatism : as a doctrine con- 
cerning the nature of truth, 
315 sqq. ; Professor William 
James's form of pragmatism 
expounded, 316-323 ; criticised, 
324-340; in what sense the 
author's theory of truth is a 
form of pragmatism, 324-326; 
in what sense opposed to the 
doctrine of James, 327-331 ; 
the pragmatist on the witness- 
stand, 331 ; in what sense 
truth transcends all verifica- 
tions in terms of individual 
human experiences, 339, 340; 
bankruptcy of recent prag- 
matism, 346, 347. See Truth. 

Provincialism : as an antidote 
to the evils of the "self- 
estranged social mind " in 
America, and as a means for 
the teaching of loyalty, 245- 
248. 

Reality : the theory of truth and 
of reality which is needed to 
complete the philosophy of 
loyalty, 301-313; truth seek- 
ing and loyalty, 313-315; 
relation of this doctrine of 
truth and reality to pragma- 
tism, 315-340 ; warrant for the 



406 



INDEX 



doctrine of reality here in ques- 
tion, 340-348, 358-373; reli- 
gious interpretation of reality, 
377; in what sense a true 
interpretation, 390, 392; re- 
lation of the true and the 
mythical elements in this in- 
terpretation, 392-398. 

Religion : 3, 5, 179 ; definition 
of, 377 ; relations to morality 
often those of conflict, 378 ; 
the efforts to reconcile religion 
and morality, 379; grief and 
imagination as the parents of 
higher ethical religion, 388 ; 
contrast and harmony of loy- 
alty and religion, " 382-389; 
the creed of the Absolute Reli- 
gion, 390 ; its justification, 391- 
396 ; mythical accompaniments 
and embodiments of religion, 
282-284, 292, 390, 397; their 
true significance, 398. Pa- 
triotism part of a religion with 
the Japanese, 235 ; not so at 
present in our own country, 
236, 237. 

Responsibility : the conscious- 
ness of individual responsibility 
hindered (according to an 
opponent of loyalty), by the 
cultivation of loyalty, 62, 63; 
the objection answered, 64, 65, 
71-76, 92-95. 

Restlessness : modern, in regard 
to traditions, and, in particular, 
in regard to ethical traditions, 
2-6; consequent need of a 
revision of ethical standards, 
9-12 ; such a revision no mere 
break with the past, 11, 12; 
loyalty as an antidote for moral 
restlessness, 22, 44, 45, 73, 76, 
95-97. 

Right and Wrong : the problem 
of their distinction is soluble 
only in terms of our own will, 
24. See Duty, Conscience, 
Ethics, Loyalty. 

Rights : their relation to duties 
from the point of view of some 



forms of modern individual- 
ism, 66-68 ; such individual- 
ism opposed by the spirit of 
loyalty, 75 ; yet loyalty in- 
volves some assertion of indi- 
vidual rights, 42 ; rights de- 
fined in terms of loyalty, 143, 
161, 162. 
Russian : protest of a young 
Russian against loyalty, cited 
and summarized, 60, 61, 67, 
68, 95, 211; answered, 92-95. 

Samurai, Japanese : the ethical 
code of the Samurai charac- 
terized, 72-77; cf. 98, 113. 

Self : duty determined by the 
rational will of the Self, 24-27 ; 
difficulty in discovering what 
this will is, 27-38; loyalty as 
a practical solution of this 
difficulty, 38-44, 57-59, 71-77 ; 
social nature of the self, and 
paradox of the conflict between 
self-will and social convention, 
32-37; individualism without 
lovalty no solution of the prob- 
lem, 81-98, 210, 211, 224-227; 
loyalty as a synthesis of self- 
assertion and self-surrender, 
41-44, 75, 98, 199, 211; the 
self as the centre of its own 
moral world, illusion and truth 
in this view of moral values, 
77-80, 124 ; duties to self, 142, 
143, 150, 161, 162; the unified 
self as defined by its plan of 
life, 167-172; relation of the 
self to its loyalty, 171 ; conse- 
quent doctrine of the con- 
science, 172-179. 

Self-control : as related to 
Japanese loyalty, 76; as re- 
lated to loyalty in general, 97, 
150, 161 ; cf. 287, 291-298. 

Self-will : in its relation to 
social conventions and to natu- 
ral desires and instincts, 31- 
38; in its relation to loyalty, 
38-44, 90, 93-95. See " Self 
and Will. 



407 



INDEX 



Serenity: as an ethical ideal, 
68, 69, 95-97. See Spiritual- 
ity. 

Socialism : 4. 

Social Mind : the " self-estranged 
social mind" of Hegel's Phe- 
nomenology, 238-241 ; relation 
of this conception to modern 
American conditions, 241-244; 
provincialism as an antidote, 
245-248. 

Social Will : as the result of 
social training, 38. 

Society : as the teacher of con- 
ventional morality, 24, 32, 33- 
35 ; is no final moral authority, 
25, 82-84; and nevertheless, 
a cause, for a loyal man, must 
be social, 20, 254-257 ; Ameri- 
can social conditions discussed, 
219-248. See Loyalty in Re- 
lation to American Prob- 
lems. 

Socrates : 26. 

Speaker : of the House of Com- 
mons : incident of the Speak- 
er's answer to King Charles I, 
103-107, 120. 

Spinoza : 88. 

Spirituality : as opposed to loy- 
alty by one form of ethical 
individualism, 68-70 ; as, never- 
theless, illustrated by Japanese 
loyalty, 73 ; as properly to be 
obtained only through loyalty, 
95-97. 

Sport : see Fair Play. 

Steinmetz, Dr. Rudolf : his 
" Philosophy of War," 12, 
13. 

Success : as defined in terms of 
loyalty, 89-91, 327-331, 341- 
343, 348. 

Sympathy : training in sympathy 
is not necessarily training in 
loyalty ; results as they appear 
in our American life, 217- 
220. 

Taylor, Bayard : 97. 
Thanksgiving Day : 267. 



Thomas, Saint Thomas Aquinas 
70. 

Tolstoi : 4. 

Tradition : modern assaults upon, 
3-6; ethical traditions also 
affected by this tendency, 3, 4 ; 
especial importance of the 
assault upon tradition in the 
case of ethics, 5, 6; revision 
of tradition needed, 9, 10; 
such revision not a mere break 
with the past, 11, 12; relations 
of loyalty to tradition, 53, 102, 
133. 

Training for Loyalty : see 
under Loyalty. 

Transmutation : of moral values, 
Nietzsche's movement towards 
the, 4, 5. 

Truth : the theory of truth and 
reality which is demanded by 
the philosophy of loyalty, 301- 
315 ; this theory opposed by 
recent pragmatism, 315 ; ex- 
position of Professor William 
James's pragmatism, 316-323; 
criticism of this theory, 324- 
340 ; the author 's theory of 
truth, 340-348, 358-364; its 
relation to the theory of reality, 
365-373; its relation to the 
doctrine of loyalty further dis- 
cussed, 373-376 ; our theory of 
truth meets at once an ethical 
and a logical need, 376 ; con- 
sequences for the doctrine re- 
garding the relations ot loyalty 
to religion, 377-398. 

Truth-speaking : as an instance 
of the principle of loyalty to 
loyalty, 140, 144, 154. 

Union : of various individuals in 
one life as a necessary condition 
for the definition of a fitting 
cause to which one can be 
loyal, 20, 52 (cf. 61), 58, 126, 
268-276, 326; view regarding 
the real world which must be 
true if individuals are thus in 
union through their causes, 
307-310, 312, 313; defence of 



408 



INDEX 



this view against pragmatism, 
315-340; the positive warrant 
for viewing the union of indi- 
viduals as real, 340-348, 358- 
376. 

Unity : of individual life, as a 
result of loyalty, 22, 58, 124, 
133, 169-172; as related to 
conscience, 172-179. — The 
unity of various individuals in 
one super-individual life as de- 
manded by the conception of 
a cause, 20, 307-313. See 
Cause, Loyalty, Religion, 
and Union. 

Universe : 307. See Reality 
and Truth. 

Values, Moral : they must be 
estimated in terms of the indi- 
vidual point of view, 25, 77-80 ; 
yet the individual can define 
values truly only in terms of 
loyalty, 81-98 ; the true value 
of loyalty definable only 
through a theory of truth and 
reality, 301-312; the value of 
the world life, 392-398. See 
Good and Loyalty. 

Virtues : the commonplace as 
well as the fundamental virtues 
as special forms of loyalty to 
loyalty, 130. See also under 
Loyalty. 



War-spirit : as an illustration 
of loyalty, 39-41, 53; in rela- 
tion to Japanese Bushido, 72; 
is not usually just in its esti- 
mate of the enemy's loyalty, 
109 ; is no more characteristic 
than many other forms of 
loyalty, 54, 102, 113; involves 
the evil of assailing the loyalty 
of the enemy, 115; how the 
war-spirit is to be judged in 
the light of the general prin- 
ciple of loyalty to loyalty, 214, 
215. 

Whitman, Walt : 98. 

Will : my duty as my own will 
brought to clear self-conscious- 
ness, 25; difficulty of defining 
what my own will is, 27-37 ; 
loyalty as a solution of the 
problem, 38-47. — The indi- 
vidual will, interest, and desire, 
determine the choice of the 
right cause, subject to the prin- 
ciple of loyalty to loyalty, 19, 
39-42, 52-54, 58, 93, 110, 125, 
130, 131, 138, 156, 157, 177, 
186, 187, 226, cf. 117-128.— 
The "will of the world" in 
relation to our loyalty, 390- 
391 ; the individual will and 
the universal will, 395. 

Zion : 279. 



Printed in the United States of America. 



409 



Hp HE following pages contain advertisements of a 
few of the Macmillan books on kindred subjects 



44 A book for every parent and thinker 



Outlines of Psychology 

AN ELEMENTARY TREATISE WITH 
SOME PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 

By JOSIAH ROYCE, Ph.D., LL.D. 

Professor of the History of Philosophy in 
Harvard University 

Cloth, i2tno, 379 pages, $i>2j 

More and more the practice is growing of defining a good many of 
the problems of practical life in psychological terms so far as they are 
able to do so ; and to those who share this tendency, Dr. Royce's book 
will be particularly interesting. 

He presupposes a serious reader, one who really " wants to know," 
but not one trained either in experimental methods or in philosophical 
inquiries. He tries to tell such a reader a few things that seem to him 
important, about the most fundamental and general processes, laws, 
and conditions of mental life. 

" It is not a * pedagogical psychology,' but a scientific psychology, 
written in such a way as to make readily accessible to teachers a deep 
and true knowledge of the natures which they seek to influence." — 

Western Journal of Education. 

"Obviously a treatise upon psychology that deals with the subject 
with this broad, free, strong handling is suggestive and constructive; 
helps us to organize our ideas; throws out new light; cannot be dis- 
regarded by the students of the mind. The treatise, however, has a 
special value in practical applications. These are not * helps to the 
teacher,' they are criticisms upon life and society and are helps to the 
thinker who is a teacher." — W. E. Chancellor in the Journal of 
Pedagogy. 

"The reader of this book, who, wishing to make an elementary 
study of the inner mind of the world, takes Professor Royce for his 
guide, will find himself increasingly in serious companionship with a 
winsome as well as a knowing leader." — Chicago Tribune. 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 



Social Psychology 



By EDWARD A ROSS 

Professor of Sociology in the University of Wisconsin; 
author of " Social Control," " The Foundations 
of Sociology," " Sin and Society," etc. 

Cloth, i2tno, 372 pages, $1.50 by mail, $1.65 

A study of the uniformities that come into existence among men 
from social causes. Those which are due to a common physical en- 
vironment, and those which arise from race endowment, or historical 
conditions, are no part of the author's subject at present. He seeks to 
enlarge and to clear our knowledge of society by explaining how so 
many similarities of feeling, belief, or purpose, have established them- 
selves as a result of mental contacts or mental interactions. 

These general levels of uniformity among men supply a basis for 
those groupings, cooperations, and conflicts, which are the special 
study of sociology proper. As an introduction to that science this book 
is, therefore, almost indispensable. 

" One must dissent from it occasionally, but it is a wholesome, stimu- 
lating, and serviceable work." — The Outlook. 

" Professor Ross carries his reader through the fascinating problems 
of suggestibility, the crowd, the mob, fashion, conventionality, custom, 
and social progress. If one-half of his pages are filled with long cita- 
tions familiar to most readers of sociology, the repetition is always 
timely and pointed. No occasion for holding up the mirror to Ameri- 
cans is lost; anecdotes about our fads, religious and financial manias, 
society sillinesses, deep-rooted irrationalities, etc., drive home the 
author's contentions most effectively just because everybody has heard 
them a hundred times and knows them to be true. . . . He has laid 
bare the more vital social traits, good and bad, of the human mind, 
and in a manner calculated to awaken thought." — New York Tribune. 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

04-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YQEK 



Races and Immigrants in America 



By JOHN R. COMMONS 



Cloth, i2mo, $1.25 



Books upon the problems of immigration which have recently ap- 
peared have been of two kinds : one descriptive and narrative, graphic 
sketches of travel abroad in the sources of the flood, or scenic portrai- 
ture of the types coming to us; the other, books of statistics, data 
from the census and discussion of the political phases of the movement. 
What characterizes Mr. John R. Commons' Races and Immigrants in 
America is that while he keeps certain elements of the other types, he 
is chiefly interested in his problem as a student of sociology. He dis- 
cusses Race philosophically. He analyzes democracy as a force bear- 
ing upon the social assimilation involved. He is not interested so 
much in the mere data of immigration in industry as he is in discover- 
ing what function industry forms in inducing immigration in the first 
place and moulding it later on. The same may be said about his care- 
ful discussion of the relation of immigration to crime and pauperism 
and politics. Just as Professor Steiner depicts the different races to us, 
so Professor Commons analyzes their traits and contributions to the 
body politic. The book is therefore not so much original in its data, 
as in the interpretation of the data. It is valuable largely because it is 
the last book, using a wide range of readings in other drier or more 
picturesque literature, and giving us, in addition to facts, his judgment 
as to their interpretation* Only a trained and versatile scholar could 
have given us what is, upon the whole, the most valuable and compen- 
dious book on this subject, up to date. The bibliography furnished is 
of especial value to the scholar. 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 



11 6? 




' "t* A* **< 




J* o. 









TV.* ,G 



^ ^ »y 




4 O. 






' *o PreservationTechnologies p' 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION I 

A %^*SNVhv«^# C ±*&/f?Z?3* 11 1 Thomson Park Drive C 

Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724) 779-2111 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
C7 ^f> « Treatment Date: Dec. 2004 



!i 




^ - » • . 




• -MR, V* 






MAY 82 

N. MANCHESTER, 
/ INDIANA 46962 








